Is the Shared File Server Dead – Steve Responds

Steve has written a few responses to my post on the Shared File Server being dead:

• Is the File Server dead?
• More on file systems, this time a personal view from when I worked on a LAN
• More on file systems, how I work now

There are some good comments there.

In response – my article was written about Shared File Servers specifically and much of what Steve has written relates to the File System as a much broader concept.

The one element I would challenge though is that ‘everyone knows how to navigate a file system’ recent experience has shown me how limited that statement is. People know how to post something to the place where their application has been configured to place it but actually thinking about it in terms of a structure to be navigated I’m becoming less convinced. I have recently seen directories with hundreds (and thousands) of files in a flat structure which would have been far more productive if they had been slit into directories. No-one was thinking about the file system as a structure, they were thinking it more like a set of buckets to put things into, and the buckets were defined by the applications.

Fundamentally, though, I agree with Steve in his conclusion that the alternatives have got a long, long way to go.