>
> We are thinking about upgrading our AFS server from SunOS 4.1.3_U1 to
> Solaris 2.5.1 so that we can start using Sparc Ultras as AFS servers.
> AS part of the process of getting comfortable with a Solaris AFS
> server I did some minimal load testing in our test cell. The servers
> in our test cell are Sparc Classics with 32M of RAM and circa 1992 1G
> disks. I was disturbed to find that in the couple of tests that I did
> the Solaris machine was 20%-30% slower than the SunOS machine. While
> the machines in our production cell (SPARC5s, 96M, and 4 or 5 2G
> disks) are faster, so this slowdown may not be as noticable, and with
> the additional speed of moving to ultras we'll undoubtedly end up with
> a net speed increase, I am concerned. I'm also wondering whether we
> need to rethink our plan of significantly increasing the gigabyte to
> server ratio when we move to Ultras. Does anyone have any relevant
> thoughts or experiences?
We've run for quite some time now with 8 disks per server (including
the system disk) spread across two SCSI busses. When I started here,
we were using that configuration with 500MB - 2GB disks on DEC 5000
and Sparc 1-class machines running Mach. Since then, we've eliminated
all the DEC machines, upgraded all but a handful of the Sun's to
SunOS 4, and most servers now have one 1GB system disk and seven
4GB disks with AFS data.
More recently, we've started running Solaris on some systems,
primarily to support Sun's fast-wide SCSI / 100Mbps ethernet
combo card. Most machines with those cards are Sparc 4's and 5's,
with a couple of 20's thrown in for good measure. We've also
started deploying 9GB disks, but generally not more than 2 such
disks per SCSI bus, in order to keep the GB/server ratio from
getting too absurd.
I can't recall having heard any complaints about the performance
of any of the servers running on newer hardware, regardless of
whether they are running SunOS or Solaris. If you like, I can
try to run some more concrete tests.
-- Jeffrey T. Hutzelman (N3NHS) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Systems Programmer
School of Computer Science - Research Computing Facility
Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA
