Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uunet!munnari.oz.au!mimir!hugin!augean!sirius.ua.oz.au!nt!levels!cccar
From: Chris.Rusbridge@levels.sait.edu.au (Chris Rusbridge)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: One file server or several?
Message-ID: <2669@levels.sait.edu.au>
Date: 7 Nov 89 09:52:41 GMT
Organization: Sth Australian Inst of Technology
Lines: 28

Apologies if this is not the right group for this query.

We are planning on buying a middle-sized UNIX system as a campus
server (aiming for 64 interactive users running edit, compile, run
and/or relational database work, and 16 diskless workstations, with 2
GByte disks or thereabouts). It has been suggested that we would be
better off buying two or more smaller systems instead. I guess there
seems on the face of it to be a lot more CP power in several
SPARCstation 1s than in one SPARCstation 370, for example.

But one consideration here is that we do not want our users to have to
be aware of where their files are (in the sense of having to remember
that their Pascal prac is on sysa but their 4GL prac is on sysc). The
users are also very mobile, and will be logging in from different
terminals at different times (probably mainly via telnet).

In the VMS world I am more familiar with, this can be achieved with a
VAXcluster. Can a similar result be achieved with UNIX (presumably nfs
and (whisper) yellow pages)? And what are the implications for
performance, Ethernet load and security?

Chris Rusbridge

Academic Computing Service Manager, SA Institute of Technology
ACSnet:         Chris.Rusbridge@levels.sait.oz [.au]
InfoPSI:        Chris.Rusbridge@sait.edu.au     (DTE 505282622004)
Phone:          +61 8 343 3098  Fax: +61 8 349 6939
Post:           Th