Make room! Make Room!

In comparison with the cost of our software licensing and support contracts, the cost of a the hardware is negligible, even with the most expensive OS running on it. In fact we could probably give away racks of 2U dual-Xeons with 16GB RAM and dual 300GB hot-swappable SCSI drives in order to push our applications. We could even throw in copies of Windows Enterprise Datacenter edition for those companies too cheap to outsource their operations where competent UNIX/Linux admins can be found.

Over the expected life of the hardware, the cost of the equipment is statistically 0 at a confidence level over 95% as compared to the costs of the software and people to make it work. Few idiots realise this -- not even our own. So perhaps I shouldn't have been as surprised to receive the following question:

File System 80GB not enough.

Please can you advise the $Megacorp recommended stategy for low cost solution with regard to Files Attach Archiving. We currently have a single FServ of size 40GB which is bound to grow by 25% every year. Thanks,
$CommonNon-WesternName

WTF? A dozen 2Us, half a dozen 4Us, a bodacious cluster all worth around a quarter-mill, and you not only want more disk space but you want it to be low-cost?!

Monkey: All you have to do is stop the App service, change $Value to $NewValue in the config file, and restart the service.
$CommonNon-WesternName: How do you stop service?
--
$CommonNon-WesternName: I turn off Name Resolution Server and now system not working!
--
$CommonNon-WesternName: Config file $YourBigApp.cfg does not execute! How to start server??

No, I don't think we'll be able to walk him through something as complicated as the four clicks it takes in Win2K3 to span volumes.

Software Support is prohibited from making hardware recommendations. This is a matter to discuss with your TAR or Sales Rep.

That said, you have almost 2TB available on your cluster. Please see our Cluster Admin documents and move the file storage system to the cluster machine as we recommend.

Regards,
REC

Easy. Free. Effective. Fully documented with explanations any techno-tard can follow. And that should've been the end of it. But it never is...

Hi there,
Thanks for your update. We are not for use the cluster for file savings. Please provide a working solution as we have only 80GB for the file storage.

WTF? The only thing running on a big honking $80K cluster doesn't eat as many resources as FreeCell or Notepad and you won't move the file storage to it? OK, maybe the solution is another box. And it has to be inexpensive. Let's try this...

If you are unwilling to move the files to the cluster you could build a white box file server with the OS on two small drives in a RAID-1 configuration and six 500GB drives for storage in a RAID-5 configuration for under €1500. Most PC motherboards include hardware RAID support. Our file storage system is an independent subsystem which is handled by the machine's operating system. Files are only stored and read; no special handling or communication exists.

Simple. Get a white box which costs less than a single 300G hot-swappable SCSI drive for the rackmounts.

Hi there,
Thanks again for your update. The amount of book keeping involved in removing, updating and adding files, attachments, etc. is huge no wonder we have third party products like File System Archiving Product "Livelink ECM - File System Archiving' from OpenText Corporation".

Bookkeeping? Huh? You're not supposed to touch those goddamned files, you ninny! No wonder you filed those other two tickets about missing and b0rked files.

There should be no "bookkeeping" involved in the file storage system. This is a function which is handled by $OurBigApp. If you are unable to store your attachments on your available 80 GB drive then you need to provide more storage space. I have already explained how you can move the files to space you already have available as well as how to build a 2.5TB storage machine in an inexpensive, safe and supported way. If you cannot or will not build such an external file storage server then you need to contact your TAR or Service Representative.

TAR Handoff. Force-close with prejudice. Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit.