Interesting how you completely ignore where I said raid is a good thing and a necessary thing then take one of my quotes and use that out of context to say I don't understand raid. Show where I said desktop storage is superior to raid, I didn't, stop putting words in my mouth, or we're done.
Compitent profesional IT people can still have the network go down. It's an imperfect world, screws fall out, powersupplies blow up, motherboards get old, memory gets old, drives get old, viruses happen.
Oh so now you need to decentralize your centralized applications with redundant servers, this "cheap" option just got a lot more expensive because you're now doubling the quantity of big iron in the shop.
I'm not saying all data should be stored exclusively on the desktop, in fact I said the opposite. Once again you're lying about what I said to get a point. Because you have no point if you stick to what I said. Central fileserver good; raid good; backups, as much as you can do them, good; local storage on top of all that helpful when the feces hits the rotating device which it eventually always does (plus of course local storage and locally run applications are loads faster, so not only do you maintain productivity during bad network times you always have higher productivity when the network is working).
I don't give a damn about your feeling, I'm talking about reality, and the reality is the more you centralize the more you're inviting disaster. There's a reason our very government model is decentralized, centralization invites disaster regardless of what it is you're centralizing.
Sure right after you show me where I said (1) A local copy is a bad idea... Sorry I did no mean to imply you think its a bad idea, but I do think you are selling it short, and I don't think you know enough about RAID to do that.
Oh so now you need to decentralize your centralized applications with redundant servers, this "cheap" option just got a lot more expensive because you're now doubling the quantity of big iron in the shop.
Virtual boxes are hardly 'big iron', neither are the physical boxes you need to se up clustering. A proper cluster will take advantage of existing hardware and they will act as mutual failovers for eachother.
I don't give a damn about your feeling, I'm talking about reality, and the reality is the more you centralize the more you're inviting disaster.
Im sorry you dont care about what I think, if thats the case and my opinion that I would rather have Rhonda with an engineering degree have control rather than Jane the secretary we can end this. Im less interested in talking to people who want to shout because they 'dont give a damn' what anyone else has to say if it does not line up with what you think...