We think central servers are a good idea...
We think you will too!
It's 2:00am...
Do you know where your game files are?
Seriously. Peer-to-peer based sharing systems must be housed on servers located at each school in order to function. And those servers need to be supplied, managed, and protected by each school. You may be security-conscious, but how about each of the other schools in your conference? How serious are they about preventing abuse?
With ezXchanges, your games are stored on a high availability and redundant SAN (Storage Area Network). Even a multiple disk failure will not cause an interruption to game downloading. A spare laptop or desktop drafted into service as a peer-to-peer server can't offer that kind of reliabilty.
When it comes to security, ezXchanges doesn't think you should have to rely on crossing your fingers or clapping for Tinkerbell. Our servers are locked down behind hardware firewalls and cannot be tampered with by any of the students or staff members at any of ezXchange's client schools. There will never be unauthorized MP3-sharing programs installed on one of our servers, nor will malware-infested thumb drives be inserted by unwary operators.
But isn't a central server a single point of failure?
Not if you do it right...
We have have multiple Tier 1 connectivity providers (the biggest type of pipeline) for access to the Internet backbone, so that the failure of any one master connection is not critical.
Our servers have redundant power supplies and are connected to diesel generators in case of a failure in the power grid.
The individual servers are arranged so that if one fails, another takes over. The system is backed up daily. No one "borrows" the server because they are going to be on the road, or drops it off the desk, or trips over the ethernet cable, or spills Coca-Cola into the keyboard. All access to the datacenter is restricted by keycard and only authorized personnel are admitted.
Can I get another copy of that game from week 1?
Of course. We keep the entire season in live, accessible storage. You can go back and get any of the games you might have skipped, or lost, or accidently deleted when you were freeing up space on the hard drive.
