Subject: Re: Cost of disk (was: Re: Weird hang on pentium-133 running 1.3_ALPHA)
To: None <current-users@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@kuma.web.net>
List: current-users
Date: 11/23/1997 03:38:37
[ On Sat, November 22, 1997 at 06:22:15 (-0800), Greg Earle wrote: ]
> Subject: Cost of disk (was: Re: Weird hang on pentium-133 running 1.3_ALPHA)
>
> I was originally going to respond "Geez, a 1 Gb disk costs US ~ $100 now,
> assign ``Diskless Client'' to the 80's, and surely a student can save up $100".
Diskless clients might be diskless for one or more of several reasons:
- sometimes there's just no interface to plug disks into
- they usually reboot without need to shut down
- no need to fsck after a crash (both this and the previous
point make them good for some types of kernel hacking).
- *far* easier to manage, esp. if you've got dozens or hundreds
- no need to backup many machines -- just one, the server
They have a tiny advantage over X terminals for non-kernel hacking too
in that they can run the applications and general purpose operating
systems, but they are more difficult to manage than just plain X
terminals in that they could potentially chew up just about as much
system administration overhead as a stand-alone machine.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 443-1734 VE3TCP robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets Of The Weird <woods@weird.com>