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From: tony@brueer.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Help needed with configuring Suns
Message-ID: <241@brueer.brueer.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Feb-86 16:57:48 EST
Article-I.D.: brueer.241
Posted: Wed Feb 12 16:57:48 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Feb-86 05:31:09 EST
Organization: Dept of EE & E, Brunel University, Uxbridge, U.K.
Lines: 28

We are planning to buy a Sun workstation configuration consisting of 12
seats. The options we are considering are:

	(1) 12 disk-less Sun 3/50 workstations, each with 4Mb of memory
	    and the 68881 chip, and a 3/180S fileserver with 4Mb of memory 
	    and 2 380Mb Fujitsu Eagle drives on a single controller.

	(2) 12 Sun 3/50 workstations, each with 4Mb of memory and the 68881
	    chip, 6 of which are disk-less and 6 of which have SCSI-connected
	    71 Mb disks. Each pair of 3/50s would share a 71 Mb disk for
	    "disk serving". Also a 3/180S fileserver with 4Mb of memory but
	    only 1 380Mb Fujitsu Eagle.

The second configuration has been put up because of a general "lack of faith"
in the disk-less approach, especially when going beyond 12 seats. This is NOT
based on experience however and the second configuration has cost penalties.

Has anybody experience of large disk-less configurations? (needn't be of 3
series Suns - 2 series would do) Has anybody done comparisons between disk-less
and SCSI-disked nodes? Any comments? I don't mind if Sun U.S. answers!

Apologies if this has been a recent topic of discussion.

Please e-mail any comments to:
	tony%ee.brunel.ac.uk@ucl-cs.arpa (or whatever)

Thanks
Tony Begg