Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!gatech!unmvax!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-ses!wunder
From: wunder@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM (Walter Underwood)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Experience sought with large HP 9000 clusters
Message-ID: <920029@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Jun 89 18:23:00 GMT
References: <3517@cps3xx.UUCP>
Organization: HP SW Engineering Systems - Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 23


   Questions: Is this a reasonable number of cnodes per cluster? Has anyone
   experienced problems running out of process ids in a large cluster? Does
   anyone have a workaround for the inability to put spooled devices, e.g.,
   printers, on cnodes? Any advice? Horror stories?

I don't know, but we run with about 10 nodes per cluster.  Also, I might
put more than 12 Meg in the rootserver.

It is fairly easy to put spooled devices on cnodes.  We use a named
pipe to get the bits over.  It lives in the filesystem, so it is
shared.  The spooler on the rootserver writes to the pipe, and a little
process on the cnode reads from it and dumps to the device.

I don't have any horror stories, but check out your ethernet carefully.
We had some loose connectors which did not cause trouble with Telnet
and FTP, but did show up with diskless.  Also, it is a very, very good
idae to have the entire cluster on the same copper.  If the segment is
unterminated, and the cnodes and rootserver can verify that by analog
means, they will wait for the cable to be reconnected.  If there is
a repeater in there, they cannot verify the problem and will suicide.

wunder