[Sunhelp] Numerous free SunRay1

[Mark C. Langston]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 01:11:20AM -0600, Ian Hall-Beyer wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 15:26:16 -0700, Mark C. Langston wrote:
> 
> >On the bright side, the "you must use on a dual-interface system, with the
> >sunrays on a private net" bit is just optimal config info rather than
> >a requirement. :)
> 
> Well, using them on a private network is a must. As for dual interface,
> you'll have to clarify. A sunray server needs to have one interface to
> the LAN, and one to the SunRay network. Is that what you meant? Even if
> it were technically possible to share with a regular network segment, I
> sure as hell wouldn't want to. They specify switched 100Mbit for a
> reason on those things, they're severely bandwidth intensive.


That is what I meant, and it is technically possible to share with a
regular network segment.  However, I wouldn't dare try to run 2,000 of
them that way.  We were only running a handful across a switched
100mbit net, using an existing machine for the server.  In these
instances, the cost is reasonable as long as you don't have to buy a
new dual-interface machine and/or install a new switch just to use a
few sunrays (Not everyone has a switch capable of VLANs, nor do they
necessarily have administrative control over the contents of the
network closets.  Either of these situations can mean 'buy new switch'
to a small environment).  It becomes unreasonable quickly when you
factor in the cost of either or both of those.  Yes, the sunrays suck
bandwidth.  But in an environment where the average utilization of the
network is less than 10%, and where there's no intention to
expand beyond several sunrays, there's no reason not to share the
segment, unless you've got another DHCP server on the same segment.
They are bandwidth intensive, but they're not THAT bad.  We had two
running some fairly graphics-intensive X apps in a network where
there were multiple NFS crossmounts among all of the machines, and
those mounts were shuttling around 100GB/day on average.  Of the
problems I experienced with the sunrays in that scenario, bandwidth
issues weren't among them.  We could have comfortably scaled up to
5 or 10 without problems, and without needing to migrate them to a 
private net.  Again, I wouldn't begin to think I could get away with
2,000.  But 10?  Certainly.

-- 
Mark C. Langston
mark at bitshift.org
Systems & Network Admin
San Jose, CA