Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!swidir.switch.ch!newsfeed.ACO.net!Austria.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.edge.net!news
From: jeff@medsup.com (Jeff Bauer)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: FreeBSD dedicated NFS server
Date: 14 Sep 1995 18:14:05 GMT
Organization: Medical Support Services, Inc.
Lines: 40
Message-ID: <439rdd$mjk@excalibur.edge.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.183.147.30
Mime-Version: 1.0
X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.2
We are interested in using FreeBSD as a dedicated NFS server. I would
like to hear from other people who have experience with this. In
particular I would like to address the following issues:
1. We're presently using SCO, Linux, NT, and a proprietary NFS
server from Network Appliance Corp. (FAServer). I would prefer to
put medium-critical data on a BSD server, however, because I believe
this can be done relatively inexpensively. FreeBSD would seem to
be a better choice for this than Linux (for reasons of performance
and reliability). No flames please, I'm very fond of Linux :)
2. I would like to have about 8GB capacity, with the ability to
add more in the future. -a- Can this be done with a single
9GB drive with FreeBSD? -b- Is anyone using low-cost raid
solutions?
3. One of the advantages with our FAServer is that it has one huge
physical filesystem which is organized by sysadmin into separate
logical mounts. The free space gets used by whoever needs it.
This might seem like a disadvantage in certain situations, but
as a practical matter this can be very convenient. So my
longwinded question comes down to this: What are the practical
maximum limits for FreeBSD: Physical hard drives (number & size)?
Filesystem (size/inodes)?
4. What tape backup solutions are being used? I would prefer not
to change tapes during a master backup. A possible consideration
would be to have 2 DAT drives -- with data compression this might
work. Does anyone have experience with this or a better solution?
5. I notice there is already a thread running in the newsgroup
about boot disks and disaster recovery. I would be interested
in anyone's practical experience with this.
I will summarize if necessary, but as I think most responses will be
of (relatively) general interest to this group. Please don't suggest
RTFM, as I'm mostly interested in users practical experiences. And
I *will* have to RTFM anyway :)