zlacker

>>dhoust+(OP)
How are you going to scale up your storage to meet the demands of the users? Are you doing something clever, like Google Filesystem? This is not an easy problem, if you aren't prepared for it in advance. If 10,000 users sign up tomorrow... you might be very very hosed, as opposed to very very happy.

>>jganet+x1
The linked computers can be used for a kind of distributed storage system (like GFS). Say each user shares an amount of storage resources and can use a specific amount of storage of the system. If the users are willing to accept such a deal, you can reduce the cost of your own storage resources. A major problem of course is the reliability of the system.

>>soeren+l4
There's a recent research project called Farsite which tries to answer these questions.

http://research.microsoft.com/~adya/pubs/osdi2002.pdf