Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 21:24:44 -0800 (PST) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: Rod Taylor <rod@zort.on.ca> Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Thoughts... Message-ID: <200001150524.VAA95920@apollo.backplane.com> References: <0001150016090H.04098@rbtBSD.intranet>
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:[ -current seemed like the best place to put this as I suspect thats what I'll
:be using for the various NFS & linux compat updates.]
:
:In early March I'd like to setup a system of 300 systems network booted from
:multiple central servers. These systems should include server mirroring (it'd
:be nice to have more than one active) and somekind of hoarding (for laptops and
:local cache).
:
:The systems will have relatively small harddrives in them (approx. 1.8gb).
:
:I want to use FreeBSD on both the workstations (running things like KDE v2,
:Star Office for it's MSOffice compatibilities, various electronics ports, and
:some of the programming basics). Only thing I'm really missing is a
:replacement for windows Matlab.
:
:Machines all have ne2k nics with eproms on them. I'd like to mount most
:filesystems with CODA due to it's advantages. I notice theres no way to mount
:a CODA filesystem for /.
:
:Should I use NFS then (which relies upon the network being up) or is there an
:easy method to create an image on the disk? Perhaps a pre-configured install
:disk would due? (If machine broken, insert disk, wait 10 minutes till it says
:install is done and reboot?),
:
:Any thoughts on this are welcome. The system doesn't need to be installed
:until March, but I'm forming a proposal which I'll submit in the middle of next
:week.
:
:Thanks,
: Rod Taylor
:
:--
:Rod Taylor
:Partner of Zort (zort.on.ca)
I'm not sure I would consider CODA to be a production filesystem,
at least not on that scale. The author might disagree with me.
Generally speaking if you limit the functionality of the servers,
it should be possible to depend on them being up.
You have to consider the network-disconnect case: Will CODA really
result in the clients still being useable or is it a pipedream for
the type of work being done on them? If the network-disconnect case
would cause too much trouble, then using CODA will not give you any
advantages.
In terms of disk space and NFS -- you have to decide what you want to
put on those 1.8GB drives. E.G. do you use them just for swap? Do
you put a minimal system on them (potentially synchronized via NFS?),
is security an issue (a reason for booting entirely via read-only NFS
mounts for / and /usr), and so forth.
-Matt
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