Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sun-barr!sun!chiba!khb From: khb@chiba.Sun.COM (chiba) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: Academic workstations -- Followups to comp.unix.questions ONLY Message-ID: <109684@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Date: 13 Jun 89 06:07:44 GMT References: <507@lclark.UUCP> Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM Reply-To: khb@sun.UUCP (chiba) Distribution: usa Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View Lines: 30 In article cline@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Marshall Cline) writes: > >Clarkson University has quite a number of workstations, so I guess I >have enough experince to answer. However (almost) all ours are Sun's, >so I can't compare. However, I can _STRONGLY_ recommend one feature >in particular: > >We have a SINGLE disk server in our School of Engineering, all other >workstations being diskless (thin wire 10Mb/s Ethernet), being >connected via Sun's NFS. There are probably 20 or more "clients" >running off this one server. Although we're pushing the performance >of the disk server, the concept of a single disk server is the BEST >THING SINCE SLICED BREAD. I can't agree with this solution as being optimal. The "right" solution is to have most workstations "dataless" (i.e. boot locally, but nearly all files owned by a server). Each user tends has their home on a "local" server. The result of this sort of setup, is that I can login from any of a large number of workstations and get my own "local" environment ... yet by putting different folks on different servers, the network as a whole is more robust and is more responsive. Clearly "cleverly" locating my host "close" to my favored six or so machines makes life better. Keith H. Bierman |*My thoughts are my own. Only my work belongs to Sun* It's Not My Fault | Marketing Technical Specialist ! kbierman@sun.com I Voted for Bill & | Languages and Performance Tools. Opus (* strange as it may seem, I do more engineering now *)