Network Drive Software

[choucove]

Recently I have been working with some different configurations and setups for running very large software packages from a server instead of on individual workstations. To give you some background, here at the School of Engineering at the University of Kansas we have hundreds of different workstations in dozens of different labs. All of the lab computers have a standardized image of their drive that we build which includes all the software needed for their labs/assignments/work. We have been working on a brand new upgraded image for all the labs, but several of our very powerful and technical software upgrades have become massive beasts using up to 10 GB of space per software package. Because there are many of these massive software packages we have been trying to move the program off of the individual workstation and instead have the software installed on one of the university's cycle servers.

All this is done basically by creating a mapped network drive on one of the storage networks and installing the software to that mapped network drive. It should then be possible (in theory and in the few tests done so far) to access that shared folder from all the workstations (via creating a mapped network drive) and run the application installed on that drive without having to actually install it on each and every computer one at a time. This is a HUGE benefit for us with storage space and especially (and obviously) with time as it only takes one installation. So far, we have attempted this with just a couple programs, but I was wondering if others have heard of this or tried this and what programs they may have found to work or what problems they might have run into? I know that in some cases there are licensing issues also to take into consideration but for now I'm battling with the question, "Can it be done?"

 

[Rooster]

Besides the per seat licensing issues it sounds like you're after something like a SAN for applications. Seeing as how the applications will be writing all sorts of things to RAM and the hard drives as your work in it, I don't see how they would be able to manage serving multiple users from the same application unless the program was written expressly for that purpose.

SAN's can allow multiple people to work on the same file, but they require (to my limited knowledge) a separate copy of the application on each workstation in order to do so.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

This is usually only possible if the software was written for it. I have seen many proprietary (smaller and usually specialized) software companies write their software to be run this way. The bulk of the code is "server side" and is installed on the server share. Then there is a smaller "client side" application to install on each workstation.

Another thought may be a Terminal Server situation. Then you could run the software on the Terminal server and each user could log into their own separate session and use the software. Again, this usually works best if the software was written with Terminal Server in mind.

 

[TresL]

Yes, check out Term. serv or Citrix solutions.

 

[choucove]

We were successful in installing a digital design application called Quartus II onto a mapped network drive and run it from several computers simultaneous without having to actually install it on each individual workstation. All we had to do was open and run the main program executable within the mapped network drive. Everything seemed to work just fine without any errors. Additionally, the software license is based on a FLEXlm license server which has already been configured so there are no licensing errors either. This software was really not designed specifically with this type of functionality in mind, but apparently worked just fine. My supervisor said that this is really done by the program making a copy of itself in the running RAM of each local workstation.

There was another software package that they had already been running off of a server (in a different configuration) called Matlab that functions by making a copy of the program temporarily in the RAM from off the server, but was set up slightly different.

This will be kind of interesting for me to investigate over the next few days, as I will be testing out some other software programs installed on the network this way and see if they will work correctly.