Oh, I'm not forcing anyone into a Windows environment. I strongly push them towards Linux and tell them it's the preferred environment at the lab, and all our infrastructure is Linux based. We just wanted to set up a data download station, and suggested Linux, but were told the external users aren't familar with Linux (I don't know how they run the experiment, where lots of it is based on Linux, but hey, not something I get to change), and will need Windows there.

We have plenty of Labview stuff which I'm told by staff must use Windows, as well as some Matlab stuff, even though I'm pretty sure quite a lot of it runs on Linux, I don't get to override them.

And then there are the Mac users who insisted on using onenote for logging on a separate Windows computer, when their experiment controls were all Linux and their laptops are Macs, but why not use a Windows only program for this note-taking? Because it's easier than a web based logging tool to copy pictures into. (This was 2008ish, carries forward to now, though there now is a Mac OneNote client, it's still not to my knowledge multi user or runable on Linux)...

Most of the insanity comes from people who *don't care* about the technical reality and substitute their own. And are apparently OK with a lot of cluged together solutions. At least I get a job out of it.

s/through/thought/

If you look at the Law of Armed Conflict (and I don't think it's changed since I studied it) the right of self-defense of a military unit is absolute, and obviates any Rules of Engagement that may have been tacked on locally.
If you're taking fire, whoever is firing has agreed in advance that it's OK for your unit to return fire.
That's not quite the same thing at the individual level, especially looking worldwide.
However, anyone interested in legislating all that away should, in my opinion, check their privilege, apply their law to themselves, and doff their security details.
I'm guessing that would sober up a few of these [gerund] [noun]s.

Direct; indirect; serious; trollish: what difference has anything ever made with you? Your though is indistinguishable from a Möbius hooey strip, from my end. Yet I am tasked to love you in any case, just like d_r.

Truth be told, I wish I could unsee that image.

Well, there's the experimental data, and then the administrative data. Those word docs need to be shared, backed up, etc. The various matlab and labview files need to be accessible from Sun Grid Engine nodes and local Windows, Scientific Linux and Mac OSX workstations.

We currently use a RedHat HA cluster that provides NFS and CIFS / SMB access to disk stored on iSCSI devices. So sort of a home build SAN I guess. We looked into better known commercial offerings, but basically they were 10x our budget. Unlikely to happen. One of the "Wins" we got was budgeting to buy actual 1U servers with IPMI and the like. Even build your own costs a good chunk of IT budget for 5 years.

Scientists and Professors are a bit unreasonable I guess - they want high performance, reliability, and all that without having to spend a lot of money or change their workflow at all. They also flat out don't read documentation about stuff that's unimportant to their research, and to them, computers should be like mains power - it's unimportant how it works, and it should magically "do the right thing"...

If they have to know more than "plug it in", there's likely to be trouble. IT certainly can't ask any user to ... stop being a user because they don't know what a network share is, or what a computer power button is. They user is a world class scientist here to do important research - they don't have time for "unnecessarily complicated" systems. Sadly, this is of course why we have jobs. But it does generally keep us to the lowest common denominator for software and solutions.

Methinks you dropped track on the logic of the thread, but when has that ever been an impediment to you?

Yeah, bureaucracy: yeah.

Roughly the time a molecule was NOT plural atoms.

Sorry: when was a bureaucracy NOT individuals?

Honestly, I'm not sure if you're a troll, or just someone who strongly believes if you don't do it your way, you're wrong.

I'm working in a research institution. We have limited funding from grants. We are doing X-Ray research, with detectors that output data on the order of 30GB a run, and there can be more than one run a day. This data, once generated, needs to be accessible by compute nodes, without hitting the acquisition disk. There isn't reliable down time between acquisitions, so rsyncs are hard to schedule. We also need to schedule backups, which is easier on central storage, as these acquisition machines move around, and aren't always up.

Laptops have trouble carrying around 30TB for analysis, and desktops aren't cost effective with that storage load. I could also go into the issue with data walking out the door, which may be prohibited, or desired depending on the situation.

On top of binary research data, there's all the program source, program binaries, infrastructure data, standard office documents etc.

I'm not sure about a content management system - we have a Wiki which is great, and SVN which is great, and Vault for Inventor source control, which is also great. For office documents, the closest thing I'm aware of is Sharepoint, which doesn't seem like anything I want to touch with a 10 ft pole. What else should I be looking at?

And how does it work for users who barely understand "save to this network folder"?

Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Yaz

I'd love to know the better solution for Mac, Windows and Linux access to network shares, and the network shares have to be performant, local (i.e no cloud sync), not require paid software, and support several tens of terabytes per shared filesystem. Oh, and use Active Directory permissions...

I think the potential mistake here is that welfare isn't just a benefit for the people who don't pay. The people paying in to welfare get a benefit also. Less people dying in the streets. Less load on them for any family relative who hits hard times. Lower crime (the I have to steal this bread to eat today variety). Less disease going around due to no access to modern vaccines and antibiotics... Less revolutions and stupid guillotining people.

I don't know about you, but that's a pretty big benefit to me.

You are the left tonsil of evil. ;-)