WebJunction

I'm wondering if we could use a peer-to-peer network without a special server. Could one of our staff computers host Athena? We've just had the server-client setup since we first got our network. I've described our system--9 public computers, 3 staff computers plus our server. Please advise.

Ann

This answer, as Dale already pointed out, like so many in technology, really does boil down to "It depends".

First thing, though, to answer one question you had above - I would not recommend that you run it on a staff computer for a variety of reasons - security, possibly performance, management (backup, etc.) could just get complicated. At the minimum, I would recommend a computer dedicated to the catalog - now whether that computer is configured as a "server" or a "regular" computer is where the fun (depending on your perspective) starts.

Is it necessary - I would say no, based upon the review of the system requirements on the Sagebrush web site. You could run the Athena server software on a "regular" computer that is of fairly recent vintage as the hardware requirements themselves are very minimal.

Should you do this is another question that gets into the complexities of trying to answer the question.

I would say the main reason for having a "server" is that the computer hardware used to build a server is usually more robust in terms of performance, stability, etc. and is configured to be more redundant than a regular computer. Many servers come equipped with a special configuration of their hard drives called RAID that basically provides protection for your data by copying it all to multiple hard drives. That way, if a hard drive crashes, you can often restore the data and/or continue operating off of the other hard drives. All of this costs money.

And the rub comes in whether the additional dollars for those components to build a server are worth it in your case.

The other features of centralized management of users and security through what is called "domains" in Widows parlance is another benefit to having a server.

I looked around at some of your other questions and it looks like your server was doing some active directory functions. Depending on how you were using that and also how you were using the storage space on the server should also be factored into the requirements for the server if you chose to purchase one. The questions that Dale outlined above are all good ones and would help us understand better and try to make better recommendations to you than "It depends".

If the up-front money that you might have to spend on a server to provide some piece of mind and provide some additional capacity to keep your catalog running, then it might be worth it.

If your overwhelming criteria is money, then you could go with a "regular" computer workstation versus a server. If you were to do that, I would recommend that you obtain some type of backup device - my recommendation would be an external hard drive, but others might prefer tape drives - that comes with backup software that would allow you to set a scheduled backup of the computer to save the data from the catalog on at least a daily basis. That way, if the computer crashed and/or completely keeled over, you would have at least a record that was only a day old.

Once you start adding in these pieces though, my guess is that you would probably start to approach the cost of a low-end server that could do some of that for you. I just ran through a configuration for a starter server from Dell with tape backup and with a three-year next business day warranty on the hardware and it came to $1,600 (not including shipping and taxes). You could definitely get a solution for cheaper with a little investigation, but that is just a quick stab at the higher-end estimate of what you might be looking at as far as hardware. My guess is that you could probably get something even cheaper through a state contract, etc. I always look at the Dell outlet as they have warrantied computers and slightly older computers for cheap.

My last piece of advice is find someone local to help you - I work at a state library and we have a technology consultant (well, the position is vacant, but we usually do) who answers these types of questions for libraries. My guess is that your state does also. My guess is that they have probably dealt with this exact question before and can give you some more detailed advice based on a more in-depth understanding of your library's situation.