How many clients can I support

[Charles H. Buchholtz]

Pender, our Sun 4/280, provides number crunching, compiling, X clients,
editing, and email for about 150 users, with at most maybe 20 logged on
simultaneously.  The number crunching programs are niced way down so that
they don't interfere with interactive work and NFS.

It also provides file service for one diskless 3/50, 8 diskfull 3/60s, and
a diskfull 4/360.  The diskfull machines have local root, swap and tmp,
and the rest is NFS mounted from Pender.

Here are my questions:

1) We are considering adding 5 diskfull SS1+s to Pender.  How will this
   effect Pender's performance as a number cruncher?

2) If we upgrade Pender to a 4/490, but keep the same disks and
   controllers (2 DK815-10s, 1 CDC 9720-1230, 2 Xy753 controllers), how will
   that effect the NFS?

3) How about if we upgrade to IPI controllers?

4) Omni Solutions is trying to sell me an NFS accelerator.  Anyone have
   anything to say about it/them?

I would prefer personal experiences, but I'm willing to listen to idle
speculation, theories, rumors, etc.  Email me and I'll post a summary if
there is enough interest and content.

Thanks,

      Charles H. Buchholtz            chip at ee.upenn.edu
      Systems Programmer              Electrical Engineering
		     University of Pennsylvania.