kalal@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Bob Kalal) (07/18/90)
We have been looking into developing a unix-based solution to the problem of replacing an older system at Ohio State. The older system is a Dec 20 running TOPS-20 and serves as a campus time-sharing information resource (electronic mail, bulletin boards, usenet news, etc). It carries about a thousand active accounts and has about 450 logins per day with a maximum of about 50 at one time. The new system would also pick up lighter information service loads from a small unix system and another non-unix system. We have gone through an RFI process and identified several attractive and cost-effective open system technologies. We are currently looking at clustering two or more binary-compatible newer-generation risc-based deskside servers with SCSI or IPI disks. The units would have a small number of serial ports on a campus port selector and ethernet access to the campus TCP/IP network (SONNET) or telnet logins. They would share a private ethernet for inter-unit traffic from NFS disk mounts, etc. Initial user software would include Columbia MM, unix mail commands, Usenet news software, and several editors including Gnu EMACS, and a third-party EDT. We would plan o run the units as one Yellow pages domain and to NFS cross mount all but some unit-specific local disk areas on all servers. Our goal would be to have the user environment appear the same regardless of the specific unit. We would develop, port, or purchase load balancing and distribution software. We expect the load to grow and would add servers and disk as it increases. Newer servers could be tailored for specific function and location and might not be identical to the first units. Large storage servers could be a possibility with growth. The vendors and technologies we are looking at include Sun with the sparc-based Sparcserver 470 (a deskside version of the 490) running SunOS; Solbourne with thesparc-based 601 single-processor server running SunOS; Dec with a MIPS-based server running Ultrix 4; and IBM with the RS 6000 model 520 running AIX 3. Does anyone have experience with this sort of cluster in a unix environment? What is your reaction to the approach? To the hardware and software? How do you feel about the various vendors' approaches to memory use and managment, context switching, and serial or ethernet communications? Thanks in advance for your help and sharing. I'll summarize responses. Bob Kalal (614)-292-4843 The Ohio State University Instruction and Research Computer Center 1971 Neil Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210 kalal@tardis.ircc.ohio-state.edu