DEC Multias or SS1+ & SS2?
David Woyciesjes
nature of the question...
Thanks in advance for your thoughts...
Okay, here's the situation. I got a 10baseT network, with a DSL connection.
I'm wondering what you all thought would be a better setup for my NetBSD
servers (all with minimal custom kernels, of course!).
Firewall: Web/ftp: DHCP/ftp for LAN
32 MB RAM 64(or32?)RAM 64(or32?)RAM
340 MB HDD 1.5 GB HDD 1 GB HDD
---All are Digital Equip. Multias 166 MHz
... or would this be fine, considering what the Sparcs are good for ...
Firewall: Web/ftp: DHCP/ftp for LAN
SS1+ 25 MHz SS2 40 MHz SS1+ 25 MHz
64 MB RAM 64 MB RAM 64 MB RAM
500 MB HDD 2 GB HDD 2 GB HDD
---All are Sun SPARCStations
...Or would a mix be best? HDD sizes can/will be changed as necessary...
--- David A Woyciesjes
--- C & IS Support Specialist
--- Yale University Press
--- mailto:david.wo...@yale.edu
--- (203) 432-0953
--- ICQ # - 905818
J. Scott Kasten
The 166 Alphas are the faster of the boxes you are comparing. You don't
say exactly what your DSL data speed is, however, I can give you some
concrete examples here:
An SS1+ under NetBSD, Linux, or Solaris will be able to saturate the
upstream bandwidth of a 400Mb/sec DSL connection with static content.
However, SSH type secure logins would be painfully slow to initiate with
the 25MHz CPU. Thus frequent logins for remote administration makes
these undesireable, although these machines are fast enough to handle the
load when the connection is established. It's just the key generation and
so forth that kills it. It's adequate, but not preferred. May be a good
caching DNS box. Not sure how it would do in a firewall only mode.
The SS2 40MHz is more comperable to the 50MHz Sparc LX/Classic boxes that
I use. These make great web servers for heavier static loads, mail
traffic, or light dynamic content loads. SSH auth goes tolerably fast
with these, so remote admin is not as much of a chore if you're logging in
frequently. Boxes of this class should come close to saturating your
10baseT network, let alone your slightly slower DSL link.
I don't have any experience on the generation of Alpha processor in the
166 Multias, but I do know it was an early design and no where near as
optimized as the latter ones. However, it should be a respectable work
horse that should compare very well to a P-100 class PC. If you will have
much dynamic content at all, then I would go with one of these.
You also mentioned using a mix. I would highly encourage that! I prefer
to have a mix of OS types, CPU types, and configurations so that a hacker
that is fortunate enough to get into one, can't worm his way through the
whole lot.
Good luck.
Carl Lowenstein
> Delivered-To: port-...@netbsd.org
> Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:06:19 -0400
> From: "J. Scott Kasten" <j...@tetracon-eng.net>
> To: <port-...@netbsd.org>
> cc: "NetBSD/Sparc Mail List \(E-mail\)" <port-...@netbsd.org>
> Subject: Re: DEC Multias or SS1+ & SS2?
> MIME-Version: 1.0
>
>
> The 166 Alphas are the faster of the boxes you are comparing. You don't
> say exactly what your DSL data speed is, however, I can give you some
> concrete examples here:
>
> An SS1+ under NetBSD, Linux, or Solaris will be able to saturate the
> upstream bandwidth of a 400Mb/sec DSL connection with static content.
> However, SSH type secure logins would be painfully slow to initiate with
> the 25MHz CPU. Thus frequent logins for remote administration makes
> these undesireable, although these machines are fast enough to handle the
> load when the connection is established. It's just the key generation and
> so forth that kills it. It's adequate, but not preferred. May be a good
> caching DNS box. Not sure how it would do in a firewall only mode.
Something to think about: it is pretty easy to get a second network
connection for a Multia -- either a PCI card or PCMCIA. It is not so
easy to get an Sbus network card for the second network connection on a
Sparc because they (the Sbus cards) were manufactured in small quantity
at high prices.
carl
--
carl lowenstein marine physical lab u.c. san diego
{decvax|ucbvax} !ucsd!mpl!cdl c...@mpl.ucsd.edu
clowe...@ucsd.edu
Brandon D. Valentine
>
>The 166 Alphas are the faster of the boxes you are comparing. You don't
>say exactly what your DSL data speed is, however, I can give you some
>concrete examples here:
The Multia's have two advantages:
1) They're faster. This will be important if you're going to need to
ssh into the machine.
2) They have commodity expansions slots (PCI & PCMCIA) which are easier
to add a second interface to than Sbus. This will be important for the
firewall.
The Multia's have one distinct disadvantage:
1) They're far less reliable than the Sparcs.
My suggestion:
Use a Multia for your firewall. Allow ssh access to the firewall
machine, from which you can use r services on your private network. Use
a couple of sparcs for your other servers, with the fastest sparc
with the most RAM and disk drawing the job of webserver. The firewall
won't need much more disk space than the couple hunded megs a default
install of NetBSD takes up. Keep the other Multia's around as cold
spares for the firewall. If it dies of heat death, simply pop the hard
drive and network card out, move them to another Multia and keep on
trucking.
BTW, to increase Multia reliability, buy one of these:
http://www.maxcooler.com/casfan60byde.html
It's loud but my Multia is cool to the touch even when running
horizontally. No, I do not work for them or get a kickback for
suggesting the product.
--
Brandon D. Valentine <ban...@looksharp.net>
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead
of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit
their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one
of the facts that needs altering.
- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
Volker Borchert
|> 1) They're faster. This will be important if you're going to need to
|> ssh into the machine.
SSH isn't that bad. It's somewhat annoying on a 3/80, but anything
from a 4/60 (SS-1) upwards is OK.
|> 2) They have commodity expansions slots (PCI & PCMCIA) which are easier
|> to add a second interface to than Sbus. This will be important for the
|> firewall.
Eh? What is so difficult about
- get a 501-2015 FSBE/S for $75 from your favourite used Sun dealer
- add /etc/hostname.le1
- shudown -h (init 0 or 5 if Solaris)
- plug FSBE/S into any SBus slot except the slave-only one in a SS-1
- boot (-r if Solaris)
?
|> The Multia's have one distinct disadvantage:
|> 1) They're far less reliable than the Sparcs.
I don't have experience with Multias, but I think it would be very
difficult to find hardware more reliable than those old sun4c's.
|> Use a Multia for your firewall. Allow ssh access to the firewall
|> machine, from which you can use r services on your private network.
I wouldn't trust my firewall for r services. After all, the firewall
is there to protect my network, if necessary by sacrificing itself.
|> a couple of sparcs for your other servers, with the fastest sparc
|> with the most RAM and disk drawing the job of webserver.
If you think you might like to play with SSL or servlets on the
web server any time in the future, don't use a SS-1/1+/2. SSL is
annoyingly, Java just horribly slow. Been there, done that
(SS-2, SunOS 5.7, Apache, mod_ssl, JServ/tomcat) - just about
unusable.
|> The firewall
|> won't need much more disk space than the couple hunded megs a default
|> install of NetBSD takes up.
Don't use a default install for a firewall. Strip off everything
you don't need, especially stuff like compilers, emacs, X windows.
A stripped down install might not use more than a hundred megs.
If possible, put /usr and / on read only media (CDROM, or a ZIP
with hardware write protection).
vb
der Mouse
> hardware write protection).
Zip disks have hardware write protection? How? (I know it's possible
to write-lock a disk, but AFAIK only in ways that can be unlocked by
software, and hence border on useless for these purposes; also, last I
checked, the interface to locking and unlocking is undocumented - has
this changed?)
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