hart@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Bill Hart) (11/19/90)
Being fairly new to the net (3 months) and overloaded with work I haven't set up a news system yet, so I'm borrowing a 'foreign' account to do this. I work for a oceanographic research institute (CSIRO division of oceanography), we are currently in the process of updating our very tired and overworked Vax 11/750, to a Unix server. We expect to have between 20-30 people using the new machine, engaged in software development and data processing. I expect that whatever machine we purchase it will be I/O bound, so we wish to maximize our throughput. Our other requirments are being able to integrate the server with our network of Sun/Solburne workstations, add on our own VME based disk/tape controllers, and have an affordable upgrade path. The systems we have been offered (which we can afford) are - Sony NEWS 3870 (25 MHz R3000) with 80MB + VME Slots (I have a couple of questions about this machine ; is there an exabyte driver for it? is the memory SIMM memory of something else? does it have sync or async scsi ?) Mips M2000 with 32 MB 1 cpu SGI 210S 32 MB Solburne 5/601 32 MB ICL DRS 6000 1 cpu 32 MB Sun 4/470 32MB DG AV 5200 Single 25 MHz 88k 32MB Motorola Dual 20 MHz 88100 cpu 32 MB It looks like we have been offered everything from huge boxes down to headless workstations. I have done as much research as I can, but amongst the mountains of glossies, spec sheets and benchmarks, nothing really answers my question; <<<<"Which machine, in a multiuser environment, with what disks and controllers will have the best throughput ?" >>>> Speaking to someone recently they told me that their recently purchased IBM R6000 workstation had better throughput than their Sun 4/390 with IPI drives. Mips claim that going from RISCos 3.0 to RISCos 4.0 they gained an improvement in I/O performance of up to 600%. Comments like these leave me with a small sense of despair, amost all of the above machines are changing to SVR4 next year so if I do any benchmarking now will it mean anything in 6 months. The pain and anguish I am experiencing, is common to anybody making a major computing purchase, unless you have budda like patience or a perversion for being told blatant lies by sales reps. I don't have large amounts of time to do extensive benchmarking and hand wringing so if anybody can give me an idea of what machines amongst the above group have have good throughput and any comparisons I would be most grateful. Any comments on third party disks and controllers, software quality, availability, hardware reliability etc would also be welcome. Please mail replies to me at hart@ocean.ml.csiro.au and I will send a summary to the net. Thanks in advance Bill Hart. Underpaid Scientist/Programmer/Network-Manager/ Engineer/Interfacer-to-forked-tounged-salesreps Email hart@ocean.ml.csiro.au CSIRO Division of Oceanography, Australia Ph (002) 206-446