The Medley drive is created from the space that each PC running Medley
contributes. Up to 25 computers can contribute space to a single
Medley drive. All of the computers that contribute space to a single
Medley drive are known as a Pool. A network can have many
Pools on it, if necessary.
How is Medley better than Peer-To-Peer
Networking?
Medley is easier to use than peer-to-peer. Medley protects
your files from system crashes while peer-to-peer does not.
Medley is faster than peer-to-peer. Medley provides better
security than peer-to-peer.
Medley is easier to use than peer-to-peer
With Medley, all data is shared through the Medley drive, so
there's no need to hunt around the network for a file.
For example, Jane can put a file in her Medley drive and instantaneously
Bill can see it in his Medley drive. Compare this to trying
to find files with peer-to-peer networking - users need to keep
a mental map of what data is stored on every PC in the network.
Medley protects your files from crashes and down-time; peer-to-peer
does not
When you place a file on the Medley drive, Medley saves one
copy on your PC and saves a back-up copy onto a different computer
running Medley on your network. If your computer crashes
or is shut down, other users can still access the file on the
Medley drive via the back-up created by Medley. If necessary,
Medley will create additional copies to protect the back-up
to ensure that your data is always safe.
This provides fault tolerance and data availability that peer-to-peer
can't touch! When Jane put her file in the Medley drive,
a copy of the file was immediately placed on another PC.
If Jane's computer then crashed, Bill would still be able to
access Jane's file, by accessing the copy created by Medley.
With Peer-To-Peer, Bill would simply be out of luck until Jane's
machine comes back up, if it comes back at all.
When all the shared data is on a server, things are even worse.
The server is a single point of failure, when it goes down all
of the office's data goes down with it. There is no single
point of failure with Medley!
Medley is faster than peer-to-peer
Medley’s unique caching provides better performance than either
peer-to-peer or a traditional network file server. Medley
moves data to where it is used the most, making a wide range
of access as fast as a local hard drive. You're accessing
network shared data with out having to get it over the network!
Medley provides better security than peer-to-peer
Medley provides user-level security; peer-to-peer does not.
User-level security lets you control access to each file and
folder on a per-user basis. This means, for example, that
Jane can allow Bill to modify certain files, but not to modify
others. With peer-to-peer, you're limited to the same
type of access to every file on a "share".
User-level security also means that you only have to remember
your own password to get the appropriate access to files.
With peer-to-peer, you have to remember one or more passwords
for every single "share".
How does Medley decide where to store data?
Medley carefully saves data to improve performance and data availability.
When you create a file, Medley will put one copy of the file on
your PC and another copy on some other PC. When you next access
the file, the access will be faster than a network disk drive
because the data is stored on your PC. If your PC is unavailable
for some reason, other users can still access the file on the
Medley drive because Medley gets the file from the other PC.
There are many other complex actions Medley performs behind the
scenes to increase performance and data availability. For example,
if a user often accesses a piece of data, Medley intelligently
moves that data to the user’s PC. If a PC fails, Medley actively
makes copies of the data the PC held and distributes it to other
PCs to optimally protect your data.
Can I secure files on a Medley drive?
Yes. Medley’s security features are vastly superior to those
provided by Microsoft’s FAT or FAT32 file systems. Medley
provides security on files and folders at the user level. This
type of security is similar to the security provided by NT Domain
security but which is not available in peer-to-peer installations
of Windows platform networks. When a person logs into their
PC, Medley recognizes them by their user name. Once logged in,
a user can then secure files and folders on the Medley drive through
each file's property settings in Windows Explorer.
Can I access a Medley drive from
PCs that are not in the Pool?
Yes, you can use the Sharing property to set up a Network Share
of your Medley drive exactly as you would any local disk drive
on your PC. PCs that aren't in the Pool could then map a
Network Drive to this Network Share. However, if file security
is being used in the Pool, only those files and folders available
to "Everyone" will be available through the Network Share.
Can I dial in to access a Medley drive?
Yes. If you have Dial-Up Networking set up to provide access
to the PCs on your LAN, then you can access the Medley drive via
Dial-Up Networking. Additionally, if the dial-up access
is provided by a computer not running Medley, you'll need to access
the Medley drive through a network share.
How many computers can be in the same Pool?
Up to 25 computers can be in the same Pool. Multiple Pools
can be set up on the same network and computers can access Medley
drives in other Pools through a network share.
How much space can each computer contribute
to the Medley drive?
Each PC can contribute up to 2GB of disk space to the Medley
drive for each of its hard drives. For example, a PC with C, D
and E hard disk drives could potentially contribute 6GB of disk
space to the Pool. The Pool disk space grows with each PC added
to the Pool. You can also easily increase the disk contribution
a PC makes to the Pool. You might choose to do this if additional
disk drives have been added to a PC.
Can I back up the data on the Medley drive?
Medley keeps two copies of all your Pool data to provide a significant
measure of fault tolerance. It is still a good idea to backup
your Medley drive to guard against accidental file deletion or
site catastrophe. You can use any standard backup product, and
run it from any computer in the Pool to back up the files on your
Medley drive. As far as these backup utilities are concerned,
the Medley drive looks like any other local disk drive.
Should I defrag my Medley drive?
No. The Medley drive doesn't get fragmented because it
isn't really a local hard disk drive, it just looks and feels
like one! Defrag tools won't work on the Medley drive.
However, the Medley drive does use disk space contributed from
your PC's hard disk drives. Medley does benefit by having
these local disk drives defragmented. You should regularly run
a normal defrag utility on these local disks.
Can I scan for viruses on the Medley drive?
Yes. You should scan your Medley Pool on a regular basis. Any
standard virus scanning utility will work. However, since
the Medley drive has no boot sector, it is immune to all boot
sector viruses, so you will need to tailor your virus scanner
to disable scanning the boot sector when scanning the Medley drive.
Can I have a Medley Pool with only 2 PCs?
Yes. You can form a Medley Pool with from 1 to 25 PCs.
Medley’s data availability and fault tolerance characteristics
improve as the number of PCs in the Pool increases. For a Pool
with only 2 PCs, you generally need both PCs available to have
access to the Medley drive.
Can I run Medley
on a laptop?
Yes. Medley does not differentiate between portable and
desktop PCs, but there are some useful guidelines to consider
when running Medley on a laptop:
Medley works by sharing the resources of the PCs connected via
the LAN in the Pool. Medley needs to perform self-healing recovery
actions whenever it loses contact with a PC in the Pool. As such,
Medley performs best when the PCs in the Pool are nearly always
available. If your laptop is usually connected to the LAN, it
makes good sense to include it in the Pool. If the laptop is often
disconnected from the LAN (for travel or to take home), you should
probably not include it in the Pool. A Medley drive can be exported
as a network share from one of the PCs in the Pool. If you often
disconnect from the LAN with your laptop, you should access
the Medley Pool through a network share.
What happens if I need to reboot my PC?
Rebooting a PC in the Pool should be seamless to the other PCs
in the Pool. As long as a majority of the Pool's PCs remain connected,
all of the Pool data should be accessible from the other PCs.
Of course, it is always possible for enough PCs to drop out of
the Pool so that some Pool data becomes unreachable. Once the
PCs reconnect to the Pool, the data can be accessed.
What kind of network does Medley run on?
Medley requires a working Microsoft TCP/IP network. Microsoft
ships its TCP/IP networking software with Windows 95 and Windows
98. Medley has not been qualified on any other TCP/IP environment.
Can I install Medley on a compressed
disk?
Yes, but you cannot contribute space to the Medley drive from
a compressed disk.
