rutan@pcrl.sps.mot.com (Deborah Rutan) (11/28/90)
I'm new to the sun platform but not to Unix. I've administered HP 9000/350's with direct connect terminals and emulation stations with a single file server. Now I have 8 suns, upgraded 4 of them to SunOS4.1 with NIS and the others are still 4.0.3 without NIS. More suns are on order. We NFS mount each other to share application software when possible and I've streamlined the kernels the best I could to regain disk space. One BIG question I have is whether or not having a dedicated file server (such as the SPARCserved 490) would benefit us. Our applications require very large files (10-20MB). Having to get these over the network (which is what having a file server would do) does not sound like a very good idea to me. Hopefull, Deb
katz@rpal.com (12/05/90)
In article <460@brchh104.bnr.ca> rutan@pcrl.sps.mot.com (Deborah Rutan) writes: > One BIG question I have is whether or not having a dedicated file server > (such as the SPARCserved 490) would benefit us. > > Our applications require very large files (10-20MB). Having to get these > over the network (which is what having a file server would do) does not > sound like a very good idea to me. There was a day when getting files over the network was faster than getting them from the local disk because the fileserver disks were so much faster than the local disks. I would guess that this is no longer the case; however, we find that accessing files locally on our 4/60's takes roughly the same amount of time as accessing the data on NFS mounted file systems to our 4/490. Furthermore, I believe that Sun has made an informal commitment to having remote access be no slower than 75% of the performance to the local disk. I believe that the decision on whether to buy a 4/490 as a fileserver should really be made based on the following criteria amongst others: 1) How much disk space do you need? How much is it going to cost you per bit? 2) Do you need the reliability which comes from having a machine with ECC memory? 3) How are you going to do backups? Are you going to want an 8mm or 1/2 tape drive? 4) Is there a soon to be announced fileserver which will look like a 4/490 but have the Sparc 2 processor performance? Morry Katz Rockwell Science Center administrator@rpal.com (machine administration issues) katz@rpal.com (other)