dan@cortex.bcm.tmc.edu (Dan Johnston) (11/14/90)
I've had a NeXT in my lab for almost two years and in my office for
about 6 mos. I have gotten quite attached to it and look forward to
the upgrade. The question I have that I would like to see kicked
around a bit is this: How suitable would the NeXT be as departmental
server?
We currently have a solbourne that functions in this capacity. It
handles email for the department (about 30 faculty and 30 students),
runs about a dozen NCD X-terminals, and functions as a database engine
for molecular biology (Intelligenetics) software. We have been quite
disappointed in the multiuser performance of the solbourne. Although
the NeXT would obviously not be able to run the database software or
the X-terminals, how might it function as an NFS server for remote
mounting directories and other central duties (e.g. email, student
word processing, etc)? Isn't it supposed to have good I/O bandwidth.
I notice in the price list for the new machines that NeXT sells cubes
specifically configured as servers (32-64 meg RAM; 660Mb-2.8Gb disks).
Basically you could buy 2-4 of these NeXT servers (or 1 server and
5-10 NeXTstations) for the price of one solbourne. Any opinions?
Thanks,
dan
________________________________________________________________________
Dan Johnston, Ph.D. Internet:dan@cortex.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu
Professor of Neuroscience Bitnet:dan%cortex.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu@CUNYVM
or dan%cortex.neusc.bcm.tmc.edu@PSUVAX1