samba - Dec 2001 - Massive Virtual Drive, is it possible?

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!
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> 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@pcug.org.au
Manager, Authentication Subsystems, Samba Team  abartlet@samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College   abartlet@hawkerc.net
http://samba.org     http://build.samba.org     http://hawkerc.net