On Wednesday 25 August 2004 14:21, Yedidyah Bar-David wrote:
> This is exactly what I understood. But you do share the server. Would
> you recommend to David to give 10 people, that used to work on 10
> machines, with 10 CPUs and 10*nMB RAM, share one machine, even a bit
> more powerful? I don't think so.

That depends. If he already has 10 powerfull workstations with
local disks, than using them as thin-clients is a waste of resources
and your idea may be better. However, if you have 10 old PC's
(e.g: I use old diskless Celleron-300Mz) than there isn't much point
in trying to use their CPU+ram other than driving the display.

Note that if the 10 users are running "average" mix of CPU+I/O
jobs (interactive applications) than hosting them on a single
powerfull server would give better performance per dollar than
buying each his own "thick" client (this is obviously due to
the fact that CPU and I/O resources are multiplexed).

Where does the theory in the previous paragraph fail? When the
large computer isn't anymore a commodity computer (something
that you cannot buy at the local computer store, so its price
is jumping high). But a current comodity high end PC (e.g:
a P4-3Ghz, 2GB ram) can easily host 4-5 desktop users with
reasonable performance (ok, add another 1Gb if they all use
openoffice :-)

> Do you use nbd? Which version? I tried once to play with enbd, and it
> took quite some time to make it work and then it was very slow. Care
> to share your experience?

I only played with it, just like you. I didn't even bother looking at
performance since my goal wasn't a disk (why would I want a disk on
a thin client? better have it on the server). I wanted to use
it so the local floppy + cdrom would be remoted to the server...

> > The missing pieces (IMO):
> >  - Handling removable media (haven't found a way to handle
> >    this via nbd).
> 
> And did you search for one? Not that I critisize - on the contrary.

No I didn't (no time), any pointers would be appreciated, thanks.

-- 
Oron Peled                             Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
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