New York - Try this as a new approach to building a scalable network
architecture: Unplug your servers.
Although conventional wisdom focuses on shifting resources to the server to
reduce network administration costs, start-up MangoSoft Corp. is proposing a lesser role for the server.
The Westborough, Mass.-based company is pitching an intelligent
peer-to-peer architecture that uses a portion of each node's resources as a collective server, thus
creating a network environment that dynamically adapts to planned changes as well as unexpected failures.
The beta Windows software, named Medley and demonstrated at PC Expo here
earlier this month, departs from traditional peer-to-peer solutions in that users
do not need to know where data resides.
Peter Saloman, a beta tester and president of software reseller THG Sales
Automation in Wilmington, Mass., said his 10-seat network has used a traditional
peer-to-peer networking solution for some time.
"It was always a pain because drive F to one machine was drive C to
another," he said. "No one was getting a consistent look at [files]. With Medley, you don't have to remember where
it is on the network, it's always in the same spot."
Medley establishes a "universal shared object space" for data that appears
to users as one drive, said president and CEO Steve Frank. "It makes the network transparent," he said.
In addition, the software mirrors files in two locations at all times so
there is always an extra copy if a node goes down or is powered down by a user.
"It's a self-healing system, the ultimate in no single point of failure,"
said Richard Onyon, vice president of marketing.
The Medley beta sites largely are small businesses with no previous network
in place. But MangoSoft officials, pointing out that Medley can co-exist in NT Server environments, said the technology also is
suited for departmental enterprise settings.
"It doesn't need a server, but it is strengthened by a server because all
the nodes benefit from the added storage capacity," Frank said.
Popular client/server software such as Lotus Notes would still need to run
on a server, though data files would be distributed across the network.
But integrating Medley into an existing enterprise server environment might
be a challenge, said James Staten, an analyst at market researcher Dataquest, San Jose, Calif.
"You may see this in workgroups, but any time you go with a networking
system in a workgroup that's not necessarily running the same protocols as your existing network, you
may have some connectivity issues," Staten said.
Medley will be available for up to 25 nodes in August and 100 nodes by early
next year.
The software is priced at $249 for a two-seat starter kit and $199 for each
additional seat. It runs on Windows 95 now and will add Windows NT 4.0 support in the fall.
MangoSoft can be reached at www.mangosoft.com.
Copyright ® 1997 CMP Media Inc.
