Our main filestore and processing is provided on 2 Alphastations (400 & 500 MHz) & 1 dual-processor (400 MHz) DELL PC.
Our desktops currently comprise about 30 PCs, plus 4 Alphastations and 3 X-terminals. The PCs either run Linux directly or are used to access one of our 3 more powerful UNIX machines from NT via Exceed and Samba.
The plan for our first desktop PCs was to drive them with NT and use them largely as X-terminals to our UNIX Alphas via Exceed. Later Linux was added as a dual-boot option. User preference has now resulted in Linux being the favoured desktop system. Dual-booting proved very inconvenient, so it is now kept to an absolute minimum. NT is now very much a secondary (poorly supported) system. Also an original plan to keep all NT machines identical has proved impractical to maintain (due to e.g. hardware differences, software licencing, different peripherals, individual requirements).
Our main disk is in StorageWorks boxes, but is not RAID. Backup is to DLT on each of the 3 main machines.
Most of our machines are interconnected via 3-Com 10/100 Mbps Ethernet switches over Cat5 UTP at 100 Mbps (this is good for security as well as network performance and load). Meanwhile the College is installing a Gigabit Ethernet backbone.
Facilities that have proved very useful include:
We will also need to increase total cpu power: likely to be via Linux
on Intel rather than Tru64 on Alpha or some new platform.
CONCERNS
RC / rc@hep.ucl.ac.uk / 11-Nov-1999