Academic workstations -- Followups to comp.unix.questions ONLY

[Steve C. Lemke]

In article <CLINE.89Jun9165618 at sun.soe.clarkson.edu> cline at sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Marshall Cline) writes:
}In article <507 at lclark.UUCP> cullum at lclark.UUCP (Mike Cullum) writes:
}
}>We are in the process of considering the purchase of workstations for
}>a small lab in our Computer Science Department.  Our proposed 
}>configuration calls for 8 workstations (8Mb RAM, 200+Mb disk, large
}>monochrome display) and a server.  
}>...
}>Any advice?
}
}Clarkson University has quite a number of workstations, so I guess I
}have enough experince to answer.  However (almost) all ours are Sun's,
}so I can't compare.  However, I can _STRONGLY_ recommend one feature
}in particular:
}
}We have a SINGLE disk server in our School of Engineering, all other
}workstations being diskless (thin wire 10Mb/s Ethernet), being
}connected via Sun's NFS.  There are probably 20 or more "clients"
}running off this one server.  Although we're pushing the performance
}of the disk server, the concept of a single disk server is the BEST
}THING SINCE SLICED BREAD.
}...
}Thus your comment for workstation having a 200+Mb disk is one which you
}may want to reconsider.

We have the same configuration in our Computer Science lab here at UCSB.
There are about thirty suns connected with thin ethernet to two servers.
(The servers are called "cornu" and "copia" and the suns are named after
various fruits and vegetables. :-)  Anyway, things can get really slow
when lots of people are logged on - esp. near program deadlines (people
can log in to any of these suns from any computer/terminal on the engineering
network).  But, that's just a matter of carefully segregating the network,
perhaps adding another server, and adding more memory to the Suns (they
only have 4mb now).

For your setup, 8mb should be good, and I second the notion that having
an NFS server is the BEST way to go - then you only need a small hard drive
on each machine for swap space and perhaps boot-up (I'm not sure exactly
how the local drives work, but I believe you can keep the swapping traffic
off of the network by having a local swap drive).

Hope this helps,

Steve Lemke
lemke at cornu.ucsb.edu