Massive Virtual Drive, is it possible?

[Andrew Bartlett]

> Angel Gabriel wrote:
> 
> I'm new to the world of linux, and I was wondering if you could help
> me out. There reason, I'm come over to linux, is to try and create a
> massive virtual drive, that I could attacth to my servers, and have
> them use it. Speed is not essential, but functionality is. There are
> not that many people logging onto the network, only about thirty, and
> there are no mission critical applications (well yet, I got a MySQL
> server planned!). What I would like to do, it utilise our basment,
> which is FULL of oldish hardware, about 20 machines, and maybe change
> those machines into a massive virtual drive Each machine has between 4
> - 10 gigs of hard drive space, and the extra space will definatly come
> in handy. ( We only currently use about 7 gigs between us) We are
> currently on a W2k network, and this amount of storage, would come in
> handy. Thanks in advance for any tips!

Look into the MS-DFS support in Samba. 

This allows you to create a single network share, but point individual
directories at any server of your choice.  So, while you can't split a
file or a directory over more than one server, you can split up the
whole directory tree, creating a 'massive virtual drive' or sorts.

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                 abartlet at pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet at samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet at hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net