What's a good NFS server?

[Brad Yearwood]

What kinds of systems are known to perform particularly well as NFS servers?

Our Sun 3/280 can handle a certain number of diskless 3/50s and other clients
depending upon how actively each is accessing files and paging partitions.  But
if certain types of things are happening, particularly if dump tapes are being
run (either for the server's own disk or on behalf of a tapeless client with
local disk), the 3/50s can become almost unusable.

Though something might be gained by changing from the original Xylogics to a more
modern disk controller, I can't help but think that a really good server machine
should have an I/O architecture more along the lines of a mainframe, but without
necessarily having to have the hottest central processor(s).

What's available that could support maybe 8-10 software people on 3/50s, a few
causual PC-NFS users, and several hardware design workstations sloshing around
megabyte design databases, and still have some room for growth?

Brad Yearwood
Optilink Corp.  {voder!kontron, pyramid!kontron, pixar}!optilink!brad
Petaluma, CA