diskless client environment question

[Karen Petraska-Veum]

I have 4 DS3100s, one acting as a server and the other three diskless,
presently
running Ultrix 3.1.  I'm getting ready to upgrade them to Ultrix 4.1,
and due to
disk space constraints, I'm considering setting up the diskless clients so that
the /usr they mount is the server's /usr, not the
/dlenv0/root0.mips/usr.  (this
is the way that the diskless Sun's are set up).

I've read through the Ultrix 4.0 documentation (i haven't seen any new
manuals yet
for Ultrix 4.1, other than release notes) and this scenario is not mentioned,
therefore I assume that DEC does not support this configuration.

Is anyone out there doing this?  I remember hearing discussion somewhere (maybe
here) a while back that people were annoyed about having to spend the
disk space 
for what is essentially two complete usr's.  Can anyone give me any good
reasons
why I should, or more importantly, should NOT do this?

What is really screwing me up is that I will have to put all of
Ultrix/SQL, and 
some compilers on the systems once I upgrade, and putting those products
on twice
will really require alot of space.  

I'd appreciate any input.

Thanks,

Karen Petraska-Veum, Systems
karen at umbc3.umbc.edu