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

Planning a Workgroup
Distributing Applications and Data
Chapter 2 63
HP-UX release. HP recommends you implement such tightly coupled
configurations only under NFS Diskless (currently restricted to 10.x
systems).
Directories you should consider sharing are:
• application directories under /opt
• directories that hold the data on which the shared applications
operate
• directories that hold projects on which a number of users are
collaborating
• directories that hold important, volatile data that must be backed up
nightly
For example, the authors of this document keep the source text on a file
server, a Series 800 system running HP-UX 10.20, which is backed up
nightly. Our authoring tools and our web browser reside on an
application server, a K-class server running 10.20, on which all software
maintenance is done. Our local disks are not backed up and house no
applications or tools that require outside support.
Distributing Applications
The main criteria here are performance and ease of management. The
practical possibilities are:
• store them on a server and distribute them to the workstations via
NFS
• store them on a server to which users log in to run them
The only configuration you should probably rule out from the beginning
is to install each application individually on each workstation’s local
disks; this might make sense for the occasional individual user with
special needs, but software management considerations make it almost
unthinkable as a general approach.
Given that you will store applications on a server or servers, is it better
to run them on the workstations (via NFS) or on the server? Opinions are
divided, and in practice you may well mix the two approaches. But bear
in mind that modern applications are swap- and memory-intensive; it is
often better to concentrate these resources on a server than to parcel
them out to individual workstations.