lbd@alux5.att.com (02/14/91)
My group of three Sun administrators is faced with the task of installing 30 new SS-1+'s at our existing site of ~200 Suns (servers/clients, mostly). We are trading in older models for these SS-1+'s. Our existing site has 14 servers, 4 3/280s and 10 4/280s, all of the relevant ones running 4.1. We have one or two servers per lan, and, in all but one case, at least one 4/280 per lan. The backbone is now ethernet but we are testing fddi. Now, for my question: We can install these new SS-1+s either swapful or standalone. We see a potential administrative headache if we go standalone, but we also understand that there may be a performance hit if we go swapful. Has anyone out there benchmarked these scenarios? Gut feelings won't help us here -- management can't put intuition on a viewgraph :^). We're trying to find out if the increased administrative overhead might be balanced by a dramatic increase in performance if we go standalone. Dramatic means 20% or more. I realize that any numbers I get will be relative to the type of work done on the machines, the amount of swap on each client, configuration of the network, etc. I'm willing to take whatever I can get. We just don't have the man- (woman-?) power or the time to perform these benchmarks. Any numbers at all would be helpful -- we're really divided on this issue. I know that standalones perform better -- the question is, how much better? Is it worth the hassle? Profuse thanks in advance, and I will summarize... Leslie Dreyer AT&T Bell Labs, Allentown, PA lbd@alux2.att.com