Running PC's in parallel

[MorneDJ]

Hi,

We use one file server at our office to store our work documents as well as topographic images. It contains 4x 2 TB HDDs running in RAID 10 (Adaptec card), and I have found the server to be fine most of the times. However, we recently appointed 2 more people, and it appears if more than one person does GIS work the server battles (these topographical maps could be 1 - 10 GB each, and we sometimes open up to 10 each time.

I will be converting the network to a 1 GB one in a month or two (when we have the money), but I was wondering whether one can use two file servers in parallel, something similar to RAID in one PC. I want to see one server on the network, but, actually if might be 2 or more. As files change on the one PC it automatically updates the same files on the other PCs. If more than one user uses a file (different or same) it will actually send the file from another PC (that is not busy).

Any idea whether this is possible and feasible for a small company.

Regards

Morne

[Hman]

Raid array with 6 drives rather than 4 and doing the 1GB network will be cheaper and I'm guessing more successful than stuffing 2 servers of the same spec on the same 100MB network.

How much ram does the server have?

[Hman]

In a pinch adding a second 100MB NIC to the server might ease congestion a little bit.

[hamin_aus]

What software are you using?
And more importantly, does your GIS software do its work on the server, or does it pull data down to the client and work on it there
Is there a SQL backend or is it all flat files?

I do DB support for ArcGIS and we have 8 GIS guys using it on a 4 Core Hyper-V server with 16GB vRAM
It's got ArcGIS, ArcSDE and MSSQL with all running no issues.
Granted my guys never use maps anywhere near as big as 10GB, but when they do layering they can lay up to 30 big maps on top of each other...

If your GIS software downloads the image and raster data to the clients to be worked on, improving your network will make an immediate difference.
If it does it all on the server, increase your RAM, as that is where your problem may be

I could tell you to buy another server and a high performance SAN and build a load-balanced cluster that works off DFS shared folders hosted on the SAN but something tells me you haven't really investigated what exactly is causing the decrease in performance.
My bet would be RAM, but why not try running perfmon on your server for a day or so with some relevant counters and see what is actually up before you jump to the conclusion that a new server will be the magic bullet.
Definitely use this as an excuse to upgrade your network tho.
Regardless of what is causing your performance issues, a 1Gb network trumps a 100Mb one.