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From: smaug@eng.umd.edu (Kurt Lidl)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.nfs
Subject: Re: One file server or several?
Summary: another thing to consider
Keywords: nfs, sparcstation
Message-ID: <1989Nov14.150708.2813@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 14 Nov 89 15:07:08 GMT
References: <2669@levels.sait.edu.au> <36451@apple.Apple.COM>
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Reply-To: smaug@eng.umd.edu (Kurt Lidl)
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In article <36451@apple.Apple.COM> iarocci@Apple.COM (John Iarocci) writes:
>In article <2669@levels.sait.edu.au> Chris.Rusbridge@levels.sait.edu.au (Chris Rusbridge) writes:
>>[user level tasks deleted]
>>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.

>I would go along with the suggestion to split up the load over
>two or more sparcstations set up as servers than to depend on
>one machine. By using NFS you won't have any problems with regards
>to users having to remember where there files are located. Besides,
>the 16 diskless clients will perform much better if they are not all
>booting/swaping off of one machine.

Another thing to consider is the actual ethernet chip in the machine
you are buying.  The SparcStations have the LANCE ethernet chip
(made by AMD) and the SparcServers have the Intel ethernet chip -- you
can guess who makes this one.  The performance of the two chips
is NOT even close to the same.  The le0 interface on the suns can
really make mince-meat of an ie0 interface on the fileserver.  When
this happens, NFS will do nasty things like swallow all your CPU
time.  Gory details available by E-mail.

>Good luck.
You'll need it.

>iarocci@apple.com	apple!iarocci		(408) 974-3657

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