dennis@PUMPKIN-PATCH.NOSC.MIL (Dennis Cottel) (04/27/89)
Vince Skahan, in his handy summary, comments: > I would greatly appreciate it if Apollo can try to consider their > large installed customer base and give us a few ideas with what we CAN > use a 2 MB DSP80 for under SR10. I'm not asking them to buy it back, > just give me their considered technical opinion regarding what we can > do with a system with a 442 MB disk but only 2 or 3 MB of memory. > Right now, it's supposed to be a file server and under SR10 I'm > concerned that it might not be able to just serve as a TCP gateway and > run a parallel printer. I have the same concern with our DSP80A with 2 500 Mbyte disks. How about a stripped down version of the SR10 operating system that could only be run as a file server? Surely there are lots of things that could be left out -- rip out everything except what it takes to talk over the network and know about the SR10 file system. I know this is more work for Apollo (yet another product to support, more documentation), but really! how am I to justify to my management that this $50K investment should be junked -- not because the hardware is not working as well as it ever did, but because the vendor decided not to worry about it any more when updating (enlarging) their software! Dennis Cottel Naval Ocean Systems Center, San Diego, CA 92152 (619) 553-1645 dennis@nosc.MIL sdcsvax!noscvax!dennis
fisher%fisher@HAC2ARPA.HAC.COM (leroy fisher) (04/27/89)
We also have several "old" DSP80's, DSP80A's and DSP90's out there on the Ring - and are trying to figure out what to do with them when SR10 hits us. Rather than a stripped down SR10, however, I would prefer to see a real cheap hardware upgrade that would allow us to continue using those machines. If they can sell a diskless DN3000 for $5K, they ought to be able to ship a cpu upgrade at a reasonable price. And since those machines are still under maintenance, if SR10 will not run on them, they ought to upgrade them for a truly nominal charge. But I am sure that is wishful thinking.
coop@METO.UMD.EDU (James N. Cooper) (04/27/89)
I have not yet gone to SR10.x, so perhaps I am being a bit naive, but I was planning to leave my 2 DSP90's (2mb, 442mb disk) at 9.7, and move my remaining machines to 10.x. Based on what I have seen so far, the DSP's could still be file servers to the rest of my net without any problem. If there is a flaw in my reasoning, I wouldn't mind someone pointing it out to me..... Jim Cooper Dept. of Meteorology Univ. of Maryland coop@meto.umd.edu
vince@bcsaic.UUCP (Vince Skahan) (04/28/89)
I personally would not prefer a stripped down SR10 for systems under 2 or 3
MB. I just want to know what to expect as far as performance doing the
typical things that typical sites use DSP's for (...yes...I know all sites
are different...just tell us what the estimate is based on so we can
extrapolate to OUR configurations).
...what I was really asking for was a typical set of things that a 2 or 3 MB
file server can really do without being ridiculously slow at SR10...
Right now, they are the main file servers for their rings, they are the TCP
gateway, they run the print server, they have the 1600 bpi tape drive, and
lots of users are on there (hey...that's why it's called a file server :-) )
I can move the TCP stuff onto an AT-bus system and let the same system be
the gateway for ring-ring AND TCP traffic (cost about $1500)
I can get a 8mm drive to remove the need for the 9 track tape (I am probably
going to do that anyway and I figure thatrunning the tape drive on 2nd shift
to do backups is no big deal anyway )
I *could* buy a AT-bus parallel printer interface board likethe one in the
file server( I guess about another $1500) but I really don't want to.
That would leave me with the file server just serving files. Can I do THAT
on 3 MB ??? Also, I seem to remember that the computing requirements for a
network access of files will be to the receiving node at SR10...in other
words, if I use the file server as a file server, its load at SR10 will be
higher than the load at SR9 (not to mention the load imposed by the new OS).
What I really wanted to know is "can I run the file server as a TCP gateway,
run a print server (and an X-server but that's probably dreaming...) and let
it be my primary file server for the ring with "reasonable" response?
--
Vince Skahan Boeing Computer Services - Phila.
(215) 591-4116 ARPA: skahan@boeing.com
UUCP: bcsaic!skahan
Note: the opinions expressed above are mine and have no connection to Boeing...lray@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (05/01/89)
I've been running my DSP-90 at SR10 for a while now. For several weeks, I even ran it diskless off a DN660 at SR10.0. Our DSP is a 3Mb machine. It holds a 1600 bpi cypher tape drive, our printer (serial connection), and is our tcp gateway (we use COM-ECMB). In addition, it runs administrative shell scripts. The machine has no problems as a file server. I must mention, though, that the users here do not do large volumes of disk I/O. They edit, compile, and run, and it is not usual that their programs use temporary files. However, teaching users to put temporary files in /tmp solves this problem. The DSP works as a tcp gateway with no noticeable decrease in performance. What is frustrating about tcp is that SR10.0's worked (for this installation) and SR10.1's did not. There is a bug that causes tcpd to crash on DSP80/90 machines. On a good day, I will have to q and go about 4 times. If Apollo could fix this, it would make my life considerably easier. The DSP makes a poor partner for diskless machines at SR10. The DSP should not hold a global location broker, nor should it be a master registry site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leland Ray UIUC - Dept. Civil Eng (217) 333 - 3821