Power Series Iris as NFS file server?

[Stuart Levy]

We have a 4-processor Iris (240 GTX), typically used as a workstation,
and are tempted to attach a few GB of SMD disks and make it a file server too.
It might do NFS for a dozen-odd machines, mostly other Irises and Suns,
but just for user file access -- no paging/swapping or system binaries.

My question is, does anyone know how much we can expect NFS-serving to cut
interactive performance on the Iris?  Is anyone else already in this boat?
For that matter, can anyone compare Irises and Suns as to NFS performance?
(We're using a Sun-3/260 for the purpose now.)

Another question:  We tried having our Iris export its /usr partition,
mounting it from elsewhere and doing NFS file copies to measure the
bog factor.  Seemed not too bad.  BUT found that one Sun --
a Sparcstation running Sun 4.1 -- refused to mount the SGI's disk,
complaining "RPC program/version mismatch".  Other Suns (4.0.3) didn't mind,
and our 4.1 Sun happily mounts 4.0.3 NFS partitions.

This might be a better question to a Sun list, but... anyone know why a
SunOS 4.1 Sun might not mount an Irix 3.2.1 server?  (Rpcinfo notes that
Sun's mountd now offers both tcp & udp service while SGI's mountd is udp-only.
Also SGI sports mountd version 99 as well as version 1, wonder what that is?)

	Stuart Levy, Geometry Group, University of Minnesota
	slevy at geom.umn.edu, (612) 624-1867