What Desktop Search Engine For a Shared Volume? 232
kriston writes 'Searching data on a shared volume is tedious. If I try to use a Windows desktop search engine on a volume with hundreds of gigabytes the indexing process takes days and the search results are slow and unsatisfying. I'm thinking of an agent that runs on the server that regularly indexes and talks to the desktop machines running the search interface. How do you integrate your desktop search application with your remote file server without forcing each desktop to index the hundred gigabyte volume on its own?'
Re:A couple of options (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a few options you might want to consider: 1) Use Office SharePoint Server 2007 to index the share
First, MOSS isn't free.
Second, have you ever actually tried using SharePoint 2007 text search feature? I dunno what it indexes, but finding anything in that afterwards is about as convenient as searching for a needle in a haystack.
There have been claims of some huge improvements in the upcoming SP2010, which is not surprising in light of Bing, but that's not released yet.
Re:Mirror it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever actually used rsyng on a decent sized file set? Determining the changed file set requires significant disk activity.
It's a certain win when compared to just blindly transferring everything. But if you think that rsyncing 20 changed files in a 100 file working set is the same as rsyncing 20 changed files out of a 2,000,000 file working set you are very very wrong.
Completely aside from the absolute insanity of suggesting that you replicate the full contents of the fileserver to every desktop, which has been covered by others.
Re:Seriously, ask slashdot? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe search, but didn't know what to search for.
If this is a guy who's used to doing home and small business support, with a handful of machines at best, and kind of got thrown into the deep end by management because he's "good with them thar cmpooterz" then he may not be thinking "enterprise" search.
After all, why would anybody need a search engine to find a starship?
Probably searched for "shared drive search engine" or something like that.
Re:How about Spotlight? That works on shared volum (Score:2, Insightful)
Spotlight is the obvious answer if you have OS X. Not everybody in the world is lucky enough to be in that
position, most are stuck on one of the inferior platforms. Your rubbing it in, is not helping it just
alienates people who already have been through enough and have it tough.