Windows Forum

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Application Server

0 helpful
5 replies

by terry walker

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.

I work part time for an infant school running an NT4 network. The teachers need to run various childrens programs in the classroom. At the moment each class has a set of CDs which are, predictably, becoming damaged. The aim is to centralise the CD software to a central PC/server and download the package as required to the local PC.

Is a server seperate from the PDC required or can the PDC provide both services ?
How so I set up the local PCs to load the packages on demand ? I assume that he entire package should be loaded to the local PC rather than rbe run from the server.

All advice gratefully accepted.

5 replies

by dkpalmer

First, be sure the software will run from an image on the PDC hard drive. A lot of those programs are hard-coded to look for a CD-ROM and don't do well if copied to a hard drive.

Second, look at disk space - educational software is usually graphic intensive and the disk space required may be substantial.

Third, network bandwidth - you could run the programs from the PDC, but how fast is your network? Will it bog down?

And finally, back to disk space, moving the files to a PC each time you run the programs would slow down the network and possibly kill drive space on the pc.

So...best choice might be to purchase a CD Burner and make backup copies of the CD's!

by davedel

A solution we used at work was to purchase a CD Tower/Server. You can load and store 5 to 10 or 20 or "whatever" CD's on the servers hard disk, depending on what size you buy . The smaller ones are not real expensive. You then can share the CD's outuseing NT permissions, and limit the number of connections to each. Then you can store the original CD's away someplace safe. Again your bandwidth is something to consider.
Good luck Dave,,

This discussion is closed to new replies.