Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1999 18:38:43 -0600 (MDT) From: Lou GLASSY <glassy@caesar.cs.montana.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: freebsd as a departmental smb/nfs fileserver Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.05.9910151832470.18231-100000@caesar.cs.montana.edu>
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dear all, hello-
I have a few wonderings about FreeBSD...
I am a college unix systems administrator. In the near future,
one of the departments I work for is planning to get new
fileserver(s) to replace their 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.
[1] 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... :-)
[2] 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.
[3] 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 [2] and [3] 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 unix 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.
--
Catfish: I just saved our company $100,000!
Monkey 347: Wow..! What did you do?
Catfish: I just went to a site on the web and downloaded a ready-made
Mission Statement for Megasoft!
347: (clenching his jaws) Do you mean the last three weeks of
mind-numbing meetings about "Envisioning Our Corporate Future"
were totally useless?
Catfish: (smirking) That's right. These ones off the web are so good,
you can't tell them from the real thing!
347: (HWACK!) Hey 346, I've got this unconscious catfish in
my cubicle. Will you help me haul him back to the Accounting
Office?
-- from "The Adventures of Code Monkey #347"
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