lrr@Princeton.EDU (Lawrence R. Rogers) (02/06/90)
Hello: We are looking at purchasing a Sequent to service about 2400 students at Princeton University. How much time does it take to administer the machine? We are talking about a S81 with 12 processors, 120Mb of memory, ~6Gb of disk and source code. Much thanks. Larry Rogers (Postmaster@Princeton.EDU) Manager, UNIX Systems Princeton University Computing and Information Technology Computing Center 87 Prospect Street, Room 201 Princeton, NJ 08544 UUCP: princeton!lrr ARPANET/CSNET: lrr@Princeton.EDU BITNET: lrr@pucc.BITNET PHONE: 609 258 6483 FAX: 609 258 3943
abe@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Vic Abell) (02/10/90)
In article <13589@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>, lrr@Princeton.EDU (Lawrence R. Rogers) writes: > > We are looking at purchasing a Sequent to service about 2400 students at > Princeton University. How much time does it take to administer the machine? > > We are talking about a S81 with 12 processors, 120Mb of memory, ~6Gb of > disk and source code. Much thanks. The Sequent Symmetry is an excellent choice as a general-purpose system to serve large numbers of instructional users. The Purdue University Computing Center currently has three Symmetry S81 systems serving that purpose: Host CPU's Accounts expert.cc 6 784 mentor.cc 12 2,877 sage.cc 8 2,777 (Expert.cc with 6 CPU's is a special purpose, X Window System server that supports two laboratories containing Visual, X-19, X Display Stations.) The systems can handle impressive loads with 275+ logins common. Many terminal connections come through an AT&T ISN switch via a fiber optics Unibus adapter and Multibus-to-Unibus hardware of our own design. Each of the systems also drive three or four printers. We use NFS among them extensively - e. g., for sharing news and manual pages. Administrative support of Symmetry systems is as easy as supporting any general purpose, Unix system. The distributed Sequent system, DYNIX, is mostly based on 4.2BSD, but we make available to Sequent customers who have purchased a DYNIX source license a comprehensive update that brings the system up to 4.3BSD-Tahoe, including kernel modifications for advanced networking and rlogind support. Sequent has current plans for an official release that will also have extensive 4.3BSD support. We have never regretted our choice of Sequent systems for the support of large numbers of instructional users. The systems are capable, expandable and cost effective. Vic Abell Assistant Director Purdue University Computing Center