Optomisticly assume that the average user requires 32kb of space. This
is low, but multiple servers described below could handle a larger
number:
A user space disk server could be constructed with, say, a Sparc 20, and 16x2Gb disks, or some of the newer 9Gb disks. Multiple SCSI-2 (FAST+WIDE) controllers would be necessary, as would FDDI to link things together (see below for more network traffic issues). The server need not be a Sparc machine at all: so long as it can do NFS (and maybe AFS), it would be fine. This is an opportunity to ask other manufacturers to donate.
Centralizing the user disks, and keeping most processes off this machine might make it reliable enough to not require email to be delivered locally.
It is assumed that space for administrative use, e.g. menus, logs, source, etc... will not be a significant problem, and require less than 10