Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:27:59 -0600 (MDT) From: Lou GLASSY <glassy@caesar.cs.montana.edu> To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: questions about freebsd as an nfs/smb fileserver Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.05.9910132127150.14345-100000@caesar.cs.montana.edu>
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dear all, hello- Disclaimers: [a] I've been doing sysadmin work in one form or another for about 6 years, under Ultrix, Solaris, NetBSD, Linux, SGI Irix, OSF1/DUX, HPUX, AIX, ... [b] I'm reasonably familiar with SMP systems from a user-perspective (having three to feed, daily) and with the theoretical aspects of mulitprocessing, since among other things I'm working on my CS PhD in parallel computing. [c] I'm asking the following questions in good faith, so please spare me the flames. :-) My questions are: [1] What mailing list should I send my "FreeBSD as a fileserver" questions to? I didn't know, so I thought I'd try this list first... ? I am a college unix systems administrator. In the near future, one of the departments for whom I work is planning to get new fileserver(s) to replace our current AlphaServer 2100 5/300 running DUX. The kind of system I'm recommending will be one or more i386-type systems with lots of memory and disk, and possibly multi-cpu if that's wise. Because I am familiar with *BSD-type operating systems from an admin point of view, and because my experience to date with the reliability of at least one BSD-derivative (NetBSD), I am advocating we go with a *BSD-based solution for our fileserving needs. A number of friends at ISPs have used both NetBSD and FreeBSD under combat conditions, and have reported very favorably on how these systems perform under load, so I am comfortable recommending either. [2] Is anyone running FreeBSD as a departmental fileserver in a university environment? The kind of load I'm looking at is pretty modest -- let's say 50 unix systems as nfs clients, and up to 100 windows systems as smb clients, concurrently. The kinds of things users do during peak load times are writing code via the familiar edit-compile-bomb-cycle. I know about the ftp.cdrom.com setup, and am wondering if FreeBSD does fileserving as well as it does ftp serving... :-) [3] If you do use FreeBSD as a fileserver, is having a second CPU advantageous? If a second CPU is really a win, then I can push for the new server box to be a dual cpu unit. [4] My understanding at the moment is that FreeBSD uses a Big Lock to ensure only one kernel thread/CPU combination is active at at a time. Is this correct? (If it is, then it doesn't seem like multiple CPUs really will be that big of a win; if this isn't correct, then I have News for the person who told me this... :-) Why [3] and [4] are of interest, is that right now, the SMP question is the one visible difference I see that could make FreeBSD a better fit than my other alternative (NetBSD), which does not have SMP support at this time. The primary advantages of NetBSD for me, are simply that I've used it for a while, and that I can run NetBSD comfortably on all my current unix client systems (say, 30 AXP + 30 i386 boxes) With FreeBSD as a server, I still have to run DUX or something else (NetBSD) on my AXP clients. With NetBSD as a server, I can run the same OS on the clients + server(s), which makes the admin tasks a little more straightforward. Thanks kindly in advance for any information / perspectives you can give me- lou. -- Api the Baboon: You're just getting old and decrepit! No one will be able to stop the tidal wave of Java! Monkey 347: Is that so. Api: Absolutely! 347: Ah. So 10 million lemmings can't be wrong...? -- from "The Adventures of Code Monkey #347" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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