Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!Firewall!uunet!mcsun!ukc!dcl-cs!aber-cs!athene!pcg From: pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: UN*X ffs vs. OS/2 hpfs for file server Message-ID: Date: 14 Jun 91 17:34:41 GMT References: <1991Jun11.175144.24736@cfctech.cfc.com> Sender: pcg@aber-cs.UUCP Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru Lines: 50 On 11 Jun 91 17:51:44 GMT, norm@cfctech.cfc.com (Norman J. Meluch) said: norm> Right now we have a IBM PS/2 Model 95 (33MHz 486) running OS/2 1.3 EE norm> and Lan Manager 2.0 with a 3Com MC/32 (3C527) ethernet card. norm> There are those that suggest that we should try comparing this to an norm> AT&T Star Server E running UNIX SVR4.0.2.1 and their StarGroup software norm> version 3.4b, using a berkely fast file system partition. An incidental note: well, with SVR4 one should use the UFS/BSD FFS for everything really. I would like to oberve that maybe using either machine as a file server is a bit funny; both machine can run one or two dozens users in timesharing, without any problems. In particular the very large AT&T StarServer (but please have a look into the larger Dell machines) can run one or two dozens users with X windows, DOS, and Unix all together, and probably deliver much better performance, and most importantly, many less administrative headaches, than a bunch of PCs served by a OS/2. But the PS/2 95 can run a lot of users too. Using a high speed machine with high speed disks is wasted as a file server; in practice file service is neither CPU bound nor IO bound, but network bound. If you have a mainframe class machine (a 486@33 MHZ with suitable disks is definitely mainframe class, running at 20MIPS and being capable of running several GB of disk at several megabytes per second aggregate thruput) you can just do a timesharing system. If the "mainframe" is [34]86 based, you can easily run DOS under Unix on it (VP/IX, MERGE). norm> Anyone have any feel as to whether these servers would be comparable norm> in terms of file access speed/throughput, or whether one is better norm> than another? Purely as file server I think the OS/2 thing may be better, but I guess that whatever is the difference it ought to be undetectable by users. Both filesystems are very fast; the edge is with the BSD FFS, as the OS/2 HPFS is not as well tuned. But a file server does not live or die by disk IO performance, but by network overheads. Networks of PC with a file server only make sense for economic reasons, when you want to centralize your disk space to take advantage of economies of scale, and any suitably slow machine will do. After all, think, most PC based networks cannot physically transmit more than 1MB/sec. (or something of that order of magnitude) of data between all stations. Having a server than can provide an aggregate thruput of more than 1MB/sec. is entirely pointless, and any modern (16Mhz) 286 AT with some decent ESDI or SCSI disk controller and a couple of disks will do. -- Piercarlo Grandi | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@aber.ac.uk