Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV!de5
From: de5@STC06.CTD.ORNL.GOV (SILL D E)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Why we bought SLC's instead of Visuals or NCDs
Message-ID: <9006071648.AA15519@stc06.CTD.ORNL.GOV>
Date: 7 Jun 90 16:48:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab
Lines: 37

In article <1990Jun7.144309.29740@cs.umn.edu>, wytten@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Dale Wyttenbach) writes:
>
>Our main reason for buying the SLC's probably falls under the 
>versatility category.

Diskless workstations *are* more versatile, and in your case they were
probably the right way to go.  Others who are less constrained by
server horsepower and perhaps more constrained by network loading and
per-user cost would probably be better off with at least some
percentage of X terminals.

I used to think diskless workstations had it all over X terminals--
until I ran a diskless SPARCstation off my own SPARCstation.  The
administrative overhead(1), server burden(2), and increased network
throughput(3) have convinced me that that's not the way to go.

There are other considerations, too.  Workstation users have to be a
little more sophisticated, in general.  Someone needs to administer
the workstation, and you need to consider the problem of controlling
root access.

(1) setting up and maintaining diskful-server/diskless-client pairs is
substantially harder than hanging an X terminal off the Ethernet.

(2) my response time on the server was often frustratingly impacted by
the diskless client.  Contrast that with the NCD-16 I also used--it
never had a noticeable impact on the systems that served it, beyond
that inherent in the work being done.

(3) the NFS traffic on the Ethernet caused by the diskless box
accessing files--data and binaries--and swapping was sufficient to
cause clients *I* was running to hang/die.

--
Dave Sill (de5@ornl.gov)		These are my opinions.
Martin Marietta Energy Systems
Workstation Support