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From: woof@psivax.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Mixing vaxen and suns on NFS
Message-ID: <1588@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 16:29:34 EST
Article-I.D.: psivax.1588
Posted: Wed Mar 25 16:29:34 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Mar-87 01:52:35 EST
References: <669@kulcs.UUCP> <895@basser.oz>
Sender: news@psivax.UUCP
Reply-To: woof@psivax.UUCP (Hal Schloss)
Distribution: world
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 41
Keywords: NFS serious-braindamage

In article <895@basser.oz> boyd@basser.oz (Boyd Roberts) writes:
>In article <669@kulcs.UUCP> andre@kulcs.UUCP (Andre De Deurwaerder) writes:
>>We have a number of sun's and a number of vaxen, and plan to install
>>4.3BSD + NFS from Mt Xinu soon.
>>
>>Once this has been installed, we would like to give our users a single
>>home directory, to be used both when the user logs in on a sun and when
>>he/she logs in on a vax.
>
>Well, I would never ever suggest to anyone to run NFS
>with your home directory on another machine.  It's ok for the
>5 minute mail read, but *where* are you when the server crashes?
>It's barbed-wire canoe time.  
>

Well we have two VAXen running Mt. Xinu's 4.3 BSD + NFS and 4 Suns running
Sun OS 3.2. The configuration here is just as Mr. De Deurwaerder would like
to set his up. We are VERY happy with the ways things have worked out here.

Now admittedly there are problems when one of our VAXen crash and a user
on a Sun requires access to his accounts home directory or disk. The user
may have to wait as much as 30 minutes for the VAX in question to reboot and
be able to handle NFS requests. This problem is out weighed by the benefits
we have reaped of our configuration. Each Sun has a very small disk attached
to it with the minimum needed to boot UNIX and get NFS up on the air. They
each have a small /tmp filesystem and a reasonably sized swap area. These
are intended to speed up processing on the Suns. The filesystems on the
Suns are backed up rarely, as it is intended that they never change. The
VAXen (which are backed up daily) have all the files that do change, so
when we added the Suns we really did add to the workload of the people doing
backups.

In general since we depend on the VAXen being up, we are betting on them
being down only occasionally. We have been justified in this dependency
since our VAXen have a very good record in terms of staying up. We are
very happy with out current enviornment.
-- 
		Hal Schloss
		Pacesetter Systems Inc.
 {sdcrdcf|ttidca|scgvaxd|nrcvax|jplpro|hoptoad|csun|quad1|
  bellcore|logico|rdlvax|ihnp4}! psivax!woof