Mounted File Store vs Server

[Stedo]

hi,

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I though I'd put the question anyway.

I'm working with an architecture for an enterprise system. In the system we will have clients that need access to some very big files. I favored an architecture with a server which controls the security of connecting clients and serves up the files to them. Recently there has been concern over the server becoming a bottelneck in the system and an alternative has been suggested where the clients would remotely mount the disk containing files (ie no server). My question is in two parts really, if we use a server with very little processing (just serving up the data to the appropriate socket) is this really a potential bottleneck, I don't have much experience of server capacities? Also I have a bad feeling about the mounted disk solution regarding security but can put my finger on anything concrete, what are the concrete issues with mounting the file system remotely?

Thanks for any help.
Steve

 

[JurkMonkey]

Generally, a Server would be the best option. When accessing large files, its usually the bandwidth that gets sucked down.

A lot of companies will have multiple servers on different connections to help accomodate this. Of course a Fibre Optic line or two would handle this no problem

What kind of files are you transferring? Images/DICOM?

Having the mounted disks can be an IT Nightmare as well as a Development nightmare. What happens if one of the boxes goes down? You have to treat every box as if its a server.

 

[Stedo]

hi,

Good guess! Yup, we're dealing with images for the medical sector and they are very large images. However we are likely to only stream out small parts of the image at one time in response to user actions. I also went for the server based architecture but I got the question about the server becoming a bottleneck if we are streaming say 20 images at one time (main concern was with CPU usage). What I'm not sure about is if mounting disks would solve that problem anyway.

Thanks
Steve

 

[JurkMonkey]

I would recommend a separate server. Your PACS server needs to be able to deal with requests separate from your Information system. (CIS/HIS/RIS)