gerhard@tuhold.UUCP (Gerhard Friedrich) (05/26/88)
We have currently a MicroVaxII and a VAX/750 running under Ultrix 2.0
and a SUN3/50 running SunOS 3.4. We plan to buy further SUN workstations
and want to use all these machines under NFS. Now we do not know how far
this integration goes. Is it possible to run diskless SUN workstations
together with a VAX server or do we need at least one SUN server?
Can we store SUN binaries on a VAX server?
Did anybody try a similar configuration and what were his (her)
experiences (performance etc.)?
Please do not post, but e-mail all answers to me. I'll post a summary,
if I get enough interesting answers.
Thank you.
Gerhard Friedrich
Technical University of Vienna
net: gerhard@tuhold.uucp
..!mcvax!tuvie!tuhold!gerhard
For the hungry line eater .....rwood@ic.berkeley.edu.UUCP (06/21/88)
In article <38552@felix.UUCP> you write: > Is it possible to run diskless SUN workstations together with a > VAX server or do we need at least one SUN server? [I'm assuming the VAX is running Ultrix. If you're using someone elses Unix with someone else's NFS, my comments are not applicable] Theoretically, yes. The only two caveats: you'll have to be running Sun's newer diskless software, that uses (I think it's:) NETdisk instead of ND. DEC already supports it. OTHER CAVEAT: Unless your or someone on your staff is a *REAL* guru, I wouldn't recommend it. There are too many problems you could get mired in, it might tax the patience of the best engineers from DEC or Sun to work it through. I'd seriously recommend using a Sun Server (assuming you insist on buying Suns :-( ) for boot purposes, and use the VAX for non-root NFS mounts. Also: most experience would recommend you run "dataless" instead of diskless. Paging/Swapping over the net would eat your ethernet bandwidth much quicker than anything else. A local disk for paging/swapping will help, without increasing network-wide management headaches. > Can we store SUN binaries on a VAX server? Of course. Setting up a VAX to serve NFS to Sun (or vice versa) is about as easy as Sun to Sun or VAX to VAX. The TCP/IP portion of the transaction takes care of hardware differences (bit order, etc), and all that's left is normal NFS. > Did anybody try a similar configuration and what were his (her) > experiences (performance etc.)? Many, many sites use VAXes to serve Suns without going diskless. DEC does in a few competitive labs, I'm know Berkeley does it in a few places also. I'm not aware of anyone trying to run Suns diskless off VAXes, although the question has been asked before. Good luck... -- =========================================================================== Unix is a registered trademark of AT&T. AIX is a trademark of IBM. Ultrix is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- It should go without saying that I'm not speaking as an official representative of DEC --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard Wood|Software Services, San Francisco|Digital Equipment Corporation ===========================================================================