Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Planning a Workgroup
Choosing a File-Sharing Model
Chapter 258
CAUTION NFS Diskless is a good choice for workgroups, or portions of workgroups,
running 10.0 through 10.20, but it is not supported on later releases.
• “Advantages” on page 58
• “Disadvantages” on page 58
• “Summary” on page 58
• See also: Chapter 10, “Setting Up and Administering an HP-UX NFS
Diskless Cluster,” on page 897
Advantages • Easy and efficient sharing of resources:
— Peripherals
— Disk space
• Single-point administration (via SAM).
• Physical security:
— Easy to keep valuable peripherals, and disks containing sensitive
data, in one central place and lock them up.
Disadvantages • Not supported after HP-UX 10.20.
• Fragile:
— If the server crashes, or is down for maintenance, no one works.
• Heavily dependent on LAN and subnet performance:
— Swap to local disk recommended for best performance.
Summary If you will be solely or mainly responsible for administering the
workgroup, and you do not need to run HP-UX 11.0, you should consider
NFS Diskless.
This model has become less popular as the price of disk space has
declined, but is still the simplest way to administer a group of
workstations. SAM, the menu-driven System Administration
Manager, has been tailored as of HP-UX 10.01 to make it easy to
administer an NFS Diskless cluster from a single console. See
Chapter 10, “Setting Up and Administering an HP-UX NFS Diskless
Cluster,” on page 897 for more information.