Server Questions

[Dave Williams]

We are considering a server for both NFS and compute engine use and have
some questions about resource utilization:

1. How much does NFS activity slow compute-intensive tasks?
2. What is the reasonable limit on the number of NFS mounts to a server
   if there is one?
3. How does the ammount of system ram affect the NFS response time?  The
   ammount of swap?
4. Do NFS "accelerators" like PrestoServe really work?  How well?
5. Is it better to have 2 small (ss330) servers, one for NFS use, and one
   for CPU tasks, or one biggun (ss370 - 390) doing both?

Any experiences and /or horror stories would be greatly appreciated.  I
appologize if this has been covered on the C.S.S. newsgroup already, but
I'm new around here... If there are enough responses I will summarize and
post.

Dave Williams   buckaroo at attctc.Dallas.TX.US