"We" are still making some efforts to improve our office network, both in terms of infrastucture, and
At the moment we have the majority of our network (Domain, exchange, tape backup, library, storage etc) hosted on hardware in our London office, and a secondary server (local-exchange (?) and storage) in our Newcastle office.
The London office benefits from local-speed access to the majority of the network, where Newcastle suffer quite a lag. This is complicated further by the fact the "storage" volumes (essentially our live project folders) are not mirrors, that act quite independantly. So over time the London-hosted library has found itself slowly being copied to (unmanaged) Newcastle locations, whilst being added to there also (and not fed back to London).
So all in all a QA nightmare.
I have long been championing a simplification (from the frontend) of our public folders so that we all (London & Newcastle) see the "same thing". Our staff have backed this call. But our "IT guys" are being soft on overhauling everything, and I fear the two new SAN arrays just ordered are just going to get a straight migration of the current "system" dumped onto them - with no thought to how they mirror/duplicate.
I've challenged this, and it's been tested that it's not feasible. That data replication can't happen on the fly. That nightly mirrors are problematic. That dual-accessed-files cause lost work. And that clouds are dangerous. I don't buy it. We're two offices, there must be some (practical) way to ensure both locations "see" and work with the "same thing"?
