Hardware and benchmarks

[Tilman Spokert]

In article <988 at brchh104.bnr.ca> avri at asherah.clearpoint.com (Avri Doria) writes:
>I am looking for information which will help me choose between the Sun
>4/4[7,9]0 and Sparc II as NFS servers.  I want a 470, but I have someone
...
>Can a fully loaded server (i.e. maximum client population as defined
>above) still be used as a compute server (i.e. cross compilation). As a
>mail and news server?

Don't do this. What gets easily overlooked is the fact that NFS is a set
of user-level processes. So just one compile job would compete with NFS
requests for system resources, like CPU, memory, IO, bringing down the
overall server performance for the rest of the world!

One more difference between a 470 and a SS II: The 470 uses ECC memory, so
in theory is more reliable. On the other hand, I have rarely seen a SS-I
reboot because of a memory parity problem (except if a SIMM was really
bad, and had to be replaced).

Tilman Sporkert, apple!netcom!tilman or tilman at netcom.uucp 
          - I don't need a Nintendo. I got a SparcStation... -