Advice Wanted on File Servers for a Diskless Network

[Carl S. Gutekunst]

In article <11219 at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl at triceratops.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes....

...an excellent commentary.

>>I believe it is possible for Sun workstations to boot over NFS now, rather
>>than using the old "nd" protocol.  Would this be possible with a Pyramid
>>acting as a file server, or would we need at least one Sun file server?

>Pyramid demo'd discless Sun service at the Dallas UniForum in
>February.  It's not ready for release, apparently (they were using a
>hacked SunOS 3.2, from what I was told), but it's Almost There.

Pyramid is actually ready. (Honest.) It's Sun that is holding up the show.
Diskless NFS is on the laundry list of features in SunOS 4.0. When Sun ships
4.0, you will be able to use a Pyramid as your server, with no Sun server. So
far the only companies that have demonstrated diskness NFS are DEC, Pyramid,
and (of course) Sun. Maybe Mt. Xinu, too. Should be lots more later.

No support is planned for diskless Pyramids. :-)

Latest rumors are that SunOS 4.0 will start shipping around June-July-August.
So much has changed in this release that Sun is testing it exhaustively.

<csg>