GregA said:
Nice ideas. Basically if I'm reading you right, you're saying have high power computers sharing each others processing power, and without hard disks (using a quality central storage RAID system). Interesting.
You'd have a system disk and some limited storage in the consumer machines, saving high-speed disk access for the network storage unit or professional machines. Essentially, home and small business networks could be turned into a sort of completely linked setup that turns them into limited supercomputers.
Apple: Supercomputing for the Rest of Us.
It could happen.
I've got 2 thoughts on your idea. You don't want to have a central high power computer with dumb terminals, so is there an advantage to having 2 machines with 1.8GHz processors instead of 1 machine with 2x1.8 GHz processors and 2 separate screens? If the network is as fast as you say, then whether the computing power is local or remote shouldn't matter right?
Well, that really gets down to how the machines are designed and what your setup is going to be like. With enough badnwidth, anything is theoretically possible, but you're going to run into a couple of issues with any remote computing system - latency, dropped signal, and efficiency. The first and last are probably the most pertinent in this case, since distance increases access and transmission times (i.e. latency) that affect the overal speed of the system, and latency decreases the power of the system overall by reducing the efficiency below optimum levels.
However, this can be overcome with clever engineering and some good software, or else there would be no reason to cluster for anything at all. Apple is notorious for both, and their professional line is moving more and more into this model of doing things. The "advantage" to a single 1.8 G5 in two units, as compared to a dual 1.8 in a single unit is that you can manufacture the first more cheaply, and people can add into the cluster as necessary. You lose some benefit of shelling out for the dual, but it doesn't bar you from ever improving your system.
Imagine if you will, Joe Average. He doesn't want to get rid of his computer he paid for, but he needs more speed. With the Apple clustering solutions, he can buy a box and put it into a closet or on a rack, plug in three cables, and the network autodetects and assigns it to the virtual machine as additional resources.
Would Joe Average manage that easier than swapping a processor or changing a motherboard? I think so, especially if he can be shown that he gets to keep on using his machine and, most importantly,
neither have to learn anything new nor move his information to a new machine.
The other thought is more in support of your idea - one step further. Why have a central RAID disk at all? Why not have each computer take 5GB of its hard disk for itself, and then "give" the rest of its hard disk to the "LAN Disk".
For one simple reason - centralization is good when you can manage it. A disk array that has to search your whole network first would probably be pretty slow. One that's in a single enclosure would be faster, and one that's in the machine would be fastest. So you compromise and move your serious storage to a hot-swappable or otherwise easily changed design so that Joe Average can replace his drive if one fails or he wants more, rather than digging around inside his case.
5 computers might each provide 50GB - a total of 250GB. If the OS could make every computer's extra disk space look like one large virtual hard disk would that be useful? The OS could potentially make that redundant storage too - so you'd only get half the storage space, but the data is always stored in at least 2 places.
What you're describing exists in Apple technology today. The load-balancing done by xSan allows all the disks in an xServe RAID to be RAID striped together in any way the user wants. A RAID 0+1 setup would speed the disk access times, while also mirroring data for redundancy, and keeping the drives in a single chassis would also increase speed while allowing all machines to access the 'server' box that holds them.
Incidentally, someone apparently likes my idea (though I'm not the first to espouse it).
Linksys and Maxtor are bringing a wireless networked drive to market jointly. The system is said to include a file manager that will act as a server to PCs connecting to it.
