Kent Covert ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
 
: > Speaking of space allocations, are there any plans at MCIS for giving
: > students more space on VX1 in the near future? To have any kind of real
: > web page requires more than the maximum 1.5MB available, and just my mail
: > overflows the 0.5MB default allocation. As I've learned, the situation is
: > the same for student organizations, which I find pretty pitiful. Of
: > course, I bet the major players, like ASG, get just about as much space as
: > they want.... And I bet most of the space allocated is still not used by
: > students, so the way I see it, there's currently no good reason not to
: > give a more reasonable amount of space to those who request it (and are
: > putting it to good use, of course). This is especially true in light of
: > the fact that we can't run our own servers as an alternative, due to lack
: > of static-IP. And don't even get me started on the process we have to go
: > through right now just to get our accounts to 3,000 blocks--those of you
: > who've done this probably know what I mean (I dearly miss the days when
: > Kent handled this‹just a quick e-mail and he took care of you).
 
: There are currently no plans to increase the disk space on MiaVX1.  With
: the increasing move to desktop systems, the university does not feel that
: this would be a good investment.
 
	First Kent, I'd like to preface this post by noting that I
completely understand that such decisions are not of your doing, and I
really don't expect a substantial response, it's just a rant.
 
	I was recently told by someone in a decision making position at
MCIS that increasing user quotas would result in abuse of services
(piracy, porn, what have you).  In response to the "web page" arguement I
was informed that the only students who wanted more disk space for quotas
are people trying to set up some sort of money making scam on university
equipment, and that if they wanted more disk space they should probably
get a commercial account, which the official than noted would have a disk
quota too.
 
	The arguement of the "networked desktop" is null.  How can you
replace the services offered by a "server" with a dynamic, un-named IP
address?  If "they" were willing to support static, named IP's perhaps
we could start moving off the "Central Computing Resources".
 
	By the way, how much disk space on the cluster is dedicated to
student interactive accounts?  MUC currently has 104 users.  These users
take a total of 216.32 MB.  The largest user is well over 55mb, the
smallest about 102kb.  This averages to about 2.07 MB per user, and if you
kill the largest and smallest users, our no-quota system actually averages
to about 1.5mb, or 3000 blocks.  I guess my point is the vast majority of
people will never exceed their disk quotas, so why can't space be shared
as needed?
 
	In reality, 4 of our users represent 51% of our disk usage, with
meg counts well into the double digits.  We haven't cared because most of
them are doing something worthwhile with the space, and we haven't run out
yet.  If we had a quota of 5mb per user our average usage would be down
near the 1mb mark.  I just can't see how in todays computer hardware
market we can't have larger disk quotas.
 
	Ok, arbitrary figures for MIAVX1:
 
	Assume a 5mb disk quota.
	Every 100 users will take 200mb.
	Allow for 16000 users.
 
	You would need 160 200mb disks, or a 3.2gb disk.
	For a common PC, you could meet this need for about $375 with a
	4GB EIDE drive.
	But we need SCSI you say, and 3.2gb is a quite plausible but also
	very conservative estimate.  I agree.   Guess what, Quantum makes
	3.2GB SCSI-2 drives for about the same cost ($375).  Heck, let's
	buy two, just in case, maybe three for fault tollerance.
 
	So, for $1200, including shipping, we have enough disk space to
give student users a 5MB disk quota, including a spare drive for recovery
purposes, and an over-estimate of 100%.  Might have to throw another
hundred dollars or so in for an external enclosure, and another hundred
for cabling which brings us to $1400 or just under $0.88 per user.  I bet
no one would complain if they were charged an extra dollar, hell a dollar
a semester, to have an unlimited disk quota on the vax.  Feh.
 
my .02 -- flames welcome.