NFS File Servers

This section provides a hardware overview of Sun NFS servers. Table 2-1 illustrates the conditions under which a particular NFS file server will meet your needs.

Table 2-1

Server	Maximum Specifications	Positioning	Key Advantages
SPARCcenter 2000 or 2000E	500 NFS clients 36 subnets 731 Gbytes of disk storage Ethernet, FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Highest capacity Multipurpose enterprise server (the total solution for an entire company)	Centralized administration Maximum headroom for growth Multiprocessor, I/O, and network performance scalability
SPARCserver 1000 or 1000E	300 NFS clients 12 subnets 395 Gbytes of disk storage Ethernet, FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	High capacity Multipurpose workgroup server	Excellent capacity performance Multipurpose server (NFS, compute, database), affordable, scalable, integrated packaging
Ultra Enterprise 1	200-220 NFS clients 147 Gbytes of disk storage 4 subnets Ethernet, optional FDDI and SunATM	High capacity Medium to large workgroup server (50 to 100 users)	Excellent performing uniprocessor workgroup server that simplifies administration and lowers costs
Ultra Enterprise 2	At least 350-400 NFS clients 67 Gbytes of disk storage (4 Gbytes in the system and 63 Gbytes in the SPARCstorage Array) 4 subnets Ethernet, optional FDDI and SunATM	High performance multiprocessing server for mid to large size workgroups	High throughput for multiprocessing applications. Very high application performance. Efficient design and process handling.
Ultra Enterprise 3000	At least 300 NFS clients 42 Gbytes of disk storage (system enclosure only) More than 20 subnets per system Ethernet, optional FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Affordable departmental server	Applications support up to hundreds of users in office environments. Able to handle arbitrary NFS client loads

Table 2-1 (Continued)

Server	Maximum Specifications	Positioning	Key Advantages
Ultra Enterprise 4000	At least 400 NFS clients 168 Gbytes of disk storage (system enclosure only) More than 20 subnets per system Ethernet, optional FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Compact yet highly expandable system	Delivers high performance scalability for department applications in a distributed network computing environment. Able to handle arbitrary NFS client loads
Ultra Enterprise 5000	At least 400 NFS clients 233 Gbytes of disk storage (system enclosure only) More than 20 subnets per system Ethernet, optional FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Data center server system	Delivers high performance and high availability for enterprise wide applications supporting thousands of users. Able to handle arbitrary NFS client loads.
Ultra Enterprise 6000	At least 600 NFS clients 189 Gbytes of disk storage (system enclosure only) More than 20 subnets per system Ethernet, optional FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Most scalable and expandable Sun server	Can handle a minimum of 14,000 ops/second, which is equivalent to 140,000 PC clients. Able to handle arbitrary NFS client loads

Table 2-1 (Continued)

Server	Maximum Specifications	Positioning	Key Advantages
Netra nfs150 Server	100 NFS clients 24 Gbytes of internal disk storage (48 Gbytes with 4 Gbyte disk drives) 2 subnets with Fast Ethernet (100 BaseT), Token Ring, FDDI 9 subnets with 10BaseT Ethernet	Dedicated NFS server supporting both workgroup and department needs	Industry leading NFS price/performance with RAID 5. Very fast response times. Easy to administer with HTML user interface. Highly reliable with internal UPS and RAID 5. Includes PC-NFS server software. Exclusively supports NFS applications. RAID 5 and single file system preconfigured.
SPARCserver 20	125 NFS clients 138 Gbytes of disk storage 4 subnets Ethernet, FDDI, SunATM, and Token Ring	Low cost Multipurpose workgroup server PC LAN server	Low cost, yet powerful, flexible, and easily redeployed
SPARCserver 5	60 clients 40 Gbytes of disk storage 4 subnets Ethernet	Low cost Multipurpose workgroup server PC LAN server	Low cost High NFS performance at a low cost

SPARCserver 5 System

The SPARCserver 5 system is based on the microSPARC^(TM) .. CPU. It provides fast application performance and networking extensibility. It is ideal for a dedicated workgroup NFS server.

SPARCserver 5 System Features

The SPARCserver 5 system features are:

• 70 MHz or 85 MHz microSPARC II CPU
• 16 to 256 Mbytes of RAM (8 or 32 Mbyte SIMMs)
• 64-bit memory bus
• Two internal hard drives,
• 644 Mbyte CD-ROM drive (optional)
• 1.44 Mbyte diskette drive (optional)
• Twisted pair Ethernet (can be expanded between 5 and 9 Ethernet networks)

  · Optional AUI support

• Three SBus expansion slots
• Two serial ports, one parallel port
• Greater than 20 Gbytes mass storage capacity with external disk drives
• ^(TM) · SBus Prestoserve NFS accelerator (optional)

A SPARCserver 5 system can be upgraded to a SPARCserver 20 system by substituting the system board with a SPARCserver 20 system board. Figure 2-1 shows a front view of the SPARCserver 5 system.

Figure 2-1

SPARCserver 10 System

The SPARCserver 10 system is a high-performance workstation designed to be a workgroup NFS file server or a database server in an office environment. The system was shipped in both uniprocessor and multiprocessor configurations. Some of the uniprocessor configurations available are:

• ^(TM) · Model 30LC--single 36MHz SuperSPARC processor, no external cache
• Model 40--single 40MHz SuperSPARC processor, no external cache
• Model 41--single 40MHz SuperSPARC processor, 1 Mbyte of external cache
• Model 51--single 50MHz SuperSPARC processor, 1 Mbyte of external cache

Some of the multiprocessor configurations available are:

• Model 402--two 40 MHz SuperSPARC processors, no external cache
• Model 512--two 50 MHz SuperSPARC processors, each with 1 Mbyte of external cache
• Model 514--four 50 MHz SuperSPARC processors, each with 1 Mbyte of external cache

Figure 2-2 shows a front view of the system.

Figure 2-2

SPARCserver 10 System Features

The SPARCstation 10 system features are:

• High performance throughput based on balanced coherent bus, graphic, and networking components
• SuperSPARC processors set in a multiprocessor architecture
• Memory (RAM) ranging from 32 Mbytes to 512 Mbytes

• With four SPARCstorage Array subsystems (Model 101), the disk storage capacity of the disk arrays is 126 Gbytes.
• Twisted pair Ethernet (standard) and thick Ethernet (AUI) with an optional adapter cable
• 4 SBus expansion slots
• 2 serial ports, 1 parallel port
• 16-bit audio
• NVRAM-NVSIMM and SBus Prestoserve NFS accelerators (optional)

SPARCserver 20 System

The SPARCserver 20 system, introduced in 1994, is designed to be a workgroup NFS file server or a database server in an office environment. It is based on the same MBus and SBus technologies as the SPARCserver 10 system. Performance is increased over the SPARCserver 10 by using faster MBus and SBus technology, and faster SPARC modules. The SPARCserver 20 system has increased compute and network performance.

The SPARCserver 20 system is available in three uniprocessor configurations and three multiprocessor configurations.

The three uniprocessor configurations are:

• Model 50--50 MHz SuperSPARC processor
• ^(TM) · Model 51--50 MHz SuperSPARC processor and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 61--60 MHz SuperSPARC processor and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 71--75 MHz SuperSPARC processor and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 151--Single 150 MHz HyperSPARC processor and 0.5 Mbyte external cache

The three multiprocessor configurations are:

• Model 502MP--two 50 MHz SuperSPARC processors
• Model 514MP--four 50 MHz SuperSPARC processors and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 612MP--two 60 MHz SuperSPARC processors and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 712--two 75 MHz SuperSPARC processors and 1 Mbyte SuperCache
• Model 152MP--two 150 MHz HyperSPARC processors and 0.5 Mbyte of external cache

Figure 2-3 shows the front view of the SPARCserver 20 system. This system and the SPARCserver 5 system look alike from the front.

Figure 2-3

SPARCserver 20 System Features

The SPARCserver 20 system features include:

• More than 2 Gbytes of internal hard disk storage (two 1.05 Gbyte internal disk drives)
• Provides up to 126 Gbytes of disk storage in the SPARCstorage Array (Model 101) subsystems when directly connected to four SPARCstorage Array subsystems
• 1.44 Mbyte diskette drive (optional)
• 644 Mbyte CD-ROM drive (optional)
• Two serial ports, one parallel port
• Twisted-pair Ethernet
• Up to 512 Mbytes of memory (60 ns SIMMs)
• AUI Ethernet (optional) (can have up to 9 Ethernet networks)
• SBus or NVRAM-NVSIMM Prestoserve NFS accelerator (optional)

Sun Ultra Enterprise 1 and 2 Systems

The Ultra Enterprise 1 system is the first member of a new class of workstations based on the UltraSPARC-I processor and is designed to deliver balanced system performance.

The Ultra Enterprise 1 system can be used as a high capacity NFS server for medium to large workgroups (50 to 100 users). It is designed for reliability, availability, and serviceability. It allows easy access to replace disk drives, SIMMs, and graphics cards.

The Ultra Enterprise 2 system is a multiprocessor system based on the UltraSPARC-I processor. It comes standard with Fast/Wide SCSI and Fast Ethernet to allow the data throughput capability of this system to include the disk I/O and the network traffic. The system also has a 64-bit SBus running at 25 MHz giving maximum SBus throughput.

The Ultra Enterprise 2 system can be used as an NFS server for mid to large sized workgroups.

The Ultra SPARC CPU is matched by a very high performance crossbar-switched interconnect that can move data at peak rates of 1.3 Gbytes/second. This interconnect, the Ultra Port Architecture (UPA), is the key in providing the greatly enhanced memory bandwidth. Both the Ultra Enterprise 1 and 2 systems have a 64-bit SBus running at 25 MHz giving maximum SBus throughput.

The Ultra architecture was designed to be fully compatible with the previous generation of workstations so that all Solaris operating environment applications can run unchanged.

Figure 2-4 shows a front view of the Ultra Enterprise 1 system.

Figure 2-4

SPARCserver 1000 and SPARCserver 1000E Systems

The SPARCserver 1000 and SPARCserver 1000E multiprocessor systems, introduced in 1993, are designed to be departmental NFS file servers with flexibility for dedicated or multifunctional application environments. They support more than 200 NFS clients and provide file, database, timeshare, or computing services to a network and attached devices.

The modular design makes expansion of system boards, memory, and peripherals easy to perform. You can upgrade or expand processors by adding or replacing SuperSPARC modules. Figure 2-5 shows the front view of the SPARCserver 1000 or the SPARCserver 1000E system.

Figure 2-5

The SPARCserver 1000 and the SPARCserver 1000E systems are built around the XDBus, the system bus that provides very high data transfer bandwidth.

The CPU building blocks consist of:

• 60 or 85 MHz SuperSPARC modules (50 MHz SuperSPARC on the SPARCserver 1000 system)
• SuperCache controller
• 1 Mbyte of cache

The system has three SBus slots per system board, which are accessed by the XDBus. The multiple memory banks process information from multiple CPUs and I/O devices in parallel.

SPARCserver 1000 and the SPARCserver 1000E System Features

The SPARCserver 1000 and the SPARCserver 1000E systems have the following features:

• Up to four system boards can be installed
• Up to eight SuperSPARC processors (two per system board) can be installed
• Up to 2 Gbytes of main memory (using 32 Mbyte SIMMs) can be installed
• Up to 16.8 Gbytes of internal storage
• 50 MHz system clock speed in the SPARCserver 1000E system (40 MHz in the SPARCserver 1000 system)
• 25 MHz SBus speed in the SPARCserver 1000E system (20 MHz in the SPARCserver 1000 system)
• When connected to 12 SPARCstorage Array subsystems, the SPARCserver 1000 or 1000E systems provide up to 756 Gbytes of external storage
• Up to 12 SBus slots
• Onboard SCSI-2 port and twisted pair Ethernet on each system board
• Internal 5 Gbyte 4mm tape drive (or 10 Gbyte 8mm tape drive)
• Internal CD-ROM drive
• NVRAM-NVSIMM Prestoserve NFS accelerator (optional)

SPARCcenter 2000 or SPARCcenter 2000E Systems

The SPARCcenter 2000 or the SPARCcenter 2000E systems, introduced in 1992, provide the computing solution for a company. As such, the SPARCcenter 2000 system and the SPARCcenter 2000E system are multifunctional network NFS file servers. They support less than 500 NFS clients and have the flexibility required for dedicated or multifunctional application environments.

The SPARCcenter 2000 system and the SPARCcenter 2000E system provide scalability and extensive expansion in these areas:

• CPU processor power
• Memory capability
• I/O connectivity

They meet the following requirements:

• High capacity I/O requirements of corporate data centers
• Computationally intensive demands of other organizations

The heart of the SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system is a high-speed packet-switched bus complex that provides very high data transfer bandwidth. The backplane supports two distinct XDBuses operating in parallel.

The SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system use up to twenty SuperSPARC modules in a shared-memory symmetric multiprocessing configuration, meeting most performance needs. You can expand or upgrade the processing capability by adding SuperSPARC modules.

Main memory is configured in multiple logical units that are installed in the bus complex.

The I/O is expandable. For example, you can configure up to 40 SBus slots on 10 independent busses. The large I/O capacity and configurability makes the SPARCcenter 2000 system or the SPARCcenter 2000E system suitable for very large applications.

SPARCcenter 2000 and the SPARCcenter 2000E System Features

The SPARCcenter 2000 system and the SPARCcenter 2000E system features are:

• 20, 40, 50, 60, or 85 MHz SuperSPARC modules (each with up to 2 Mbytes of built in cache)
• Dual XDbus system bus
• Greater than 5 Gbyte main memory capacity (8 Mbyte or 32 Mbyte SIMMs)
• Up to 10 SBus channels (for a total of 40 SBus slots)
• Two RS232 serial ports on each system board (up to 20 total)
• Twisted pair Ethernet connections via SBus cards
• 10 Mbytes/second SCSI-2 channels via SBus cards
• Up to 52.2 Gbytes of internal SCSI disk storage
• 50 MHz system clock speed in the SPARCserver 2000E system (40 MHz in the SPARCserver 2000 system)
• 25 MHz SBus speed in the SPARCserver 2000E system (20 MHz in the SPARCserver 2000 system)
• When connected to 20 SPARCstorage Array subsystems, Model 101, the total disk capacity for the expansion subsystems is 630 Gbytes
• NVRAM-NVSIMM Prestoserve NFS accelerator (optional)

Figure 2-6 shows the front view of the SPARCcenter 2000 or the SPARCserver 2000E system.

Figure 2-6

Ultra Enterprise 4000, 5000, and 6000 Systems

The Ultra Enterprise 6000 server system, the Ultra Enterprise 5000 server system and the Ultra Enterprise 4000 server system are available in two enclosures (see Figure 2-7):

• Enterprise 6000 or 5000 is a 56-inch cabinet containing either a 16-slot or 8-slot card cage
• Enterprise 4000 is a standalone enclosure containing an 8-slot card cage

Figure 2-7

The same CPU/memory board, I/O boards, disk board, processor modules, memory SIMMs, power modules, and cooling modules are used in all enclosures.

The minimum configuration for the Ultra Enterprise 4000, 5000, and 6000 is:

• 16-slot or 8-slot chassis/card cage
• Modular power supply
• Fan tray (cabinet servers) or fan box (standalone server)
• Clock board
• CPU/memory board
• I/O board
• Peripheral power supply
• AC distribution unit
• SCSI receptacle for removable media, including CD-ROM

Ultra Enterprise systems have extensive error detection mechanisms, and an Automatic System Reconfiguration (ASR) feature that allows the system to be rebooted with failed components (such as CPUs, memory, or I/O) disabled. When an error is detected, the system is reconfigured so that the board containing the failed components is placed in low power mode and is no longer accessible.

The hot-plugable feature is the ability to insert a new board into a powered up system, despite being "live," or being supplied with electrical power. Once a working board is added to a powered on system with the hot-plugable feature, the Solaris 2.5.1 software environment will not use the new board until the system is rebooted. The systems also support hot plugable disk drives and redundant, hot plugable power and cooling units.

High speed networking is supported by integrated 10 or 100 Mbit Ethernet and optional ATM interface.

The systems support remote control administration, which allows remote rebooting and power cycling.

The system monitor for these servers is Solstice^(TM) SyMON^(TM), a system performance tool that you can use to:

• Monitor the performance of a large server with multiple processors, I/O, and disks.
• Optimize the configuration and throughput of the server.
• Identify hardware and software failures quickly. Failures range from major failures (CPU crash), to minor failures (slow cooling fan). Solstice SyMON identifies the component or software and its location.

• Monitor hardware performance to detect incipient hardware failure (soft read errors on a disk).

Netra nfs150 Server System

The Netra nfs150 Server system provides an easily managed, highly reliable, highly tuned dedicated NFS server. It is built exclusively to support NFS applications and running the Solaris software environment applications on it are not supported. This Netra NFS server provides superior NFS operations performance over general purpose servers.

The key benefits of this Netra NFS server include:

• Easy to install (comes with a pre-configured, turnkey system)
• Easy to use HTML management interface with the LCD system status and input panel
• Factory pre-configured RAID 5 disks
• Dedicated, simplified operation set
• Tuned for NFS performance
• System reliability (UPS for graceful shutdown on power failure)
• Uninterruptible power supply

This server meets the demands of high speed network environments. Because this server delivers high performance for NFS operations, it is most often installed in departments and workgroups where data access requirements are high and other servers are available for running applications and system management software (see Figure 2-8 on page 22).

Figure 2-8 nfs

As Figure 2-8 shows, the Netra nfs150 Server system supports both workgroup and department needs.

Netra nfs150 Server Software Support

The easy to use customized Netra NFS SmartServe^(TM) software, which is focused exclusively on NFS applications, is tuned for NFS performance and is easy to administer. The software has the following features:

• Modified Solaris operating environment (dedicated and optimized for NFS)
• SNMP agent
• Single file system and RAID 5 preconfigured
• Backup software for online backups
• Support for NFS Version 2 and NFS Version 3
• Disk management support (RAID level 5 for storage management)
• Failure management and recovery
• System performance tuning (stable memory and NFS Smart Cache)
• PCNFSD (to use with NFS on PCs)

Netra NFS 150 Server Hardware Overview

This server is based on the Ultra 1 processor board, which is designed to deliver balanced system performance. With twelve slots of data disks, the data disk capacity of this server is 24 Gbytes (48 Gbytes with 4 Gbyte disk drives). The disk drives are hot plugable. A 10BaseT Ethernet controller is build in on-board.

One of the three SBus slots are used for ISP controllers. The second SBus slot contains a 100BaseT network card. The third SBus slot is available for additional network interfaces.

This system comes in two options: tower and rack ready. Four rack-ready systems can be installed in standard Sun racks. The system also has as a standard 3.5-inch diskette drive and a 644 Mbyte capacity CD-ROM drive. The eight SIMM slots can store up to 512 Mbytes of RAM.

Disk Expansion Units

This section describes an overview of the following disk expansion units:

• SPARCstorage Array subsystem
• Desktop Storage Module
• Multi-Disk Pack
• Desktop Disk Pack
• SPARCstorage MultiPack
• SPARCstorage UniPack

SPARCstorage Array Subsystem

To expand your disk storage, consider the SPARCstorage Array subsystem. This disk array is a high-performance and high-capacity companion unit for the Ultra Enterprise 4000, 5000, or 6000 systems, SPARCcenter 2000 or 2000E, SPARCserver 1000 or 1000E, Ultra Enterprise 2 system, SPARCserver 10, and the SPARCserver 20 systems.

The Model 101 uses 1.05 Gbyte single connector 3.5-inch disk drives. Each disk array contains three drive trays. Each drive tray supports up to ten 3.5-inch single-connector SCSI disk drives. All disk drive SCSI addresses are hardwired. The position of the disk drive in the drive tray automatically sets the SCSI addresses. Each disk array uses six internal fast, wide SCSI buses. Each drive tray contains two SCSI buses that support five disk drives for each SCSI bus.

Figure 2-9 shows a front view of the SPARCstorage Array subsystem.

Figure 2-10 shows how you can connect the SPARCstorage Array subsystem to your NFS server.

The SPARCstorage Array subsystem uses RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) technology. RAID 0 stripes data without parity, RAID 1does disk mirroring, RAID 0+1 does mirroring optimized stripes, and RAID 5 does striping data with parity.

Within the disk array, independent disks plus RAID levels 5, 1, 0, 0+1 are available at the same time so you can easily match data layouts to meet the specific requirements for capacity, performance, high availability, and cost.

If any disk in a RAID 5, 1, or 0+1 group fails, an optional hot spare (if configured) is automatically swapped in to replace the failed disk. Continuous, redundant data protection is provided, even if a disk fails.

Warm plug service lets you replace one or more disks without powering down the system and the disk array, or rebooting the system. You can obtain warm plug service if multiple disk arrays are configured.

Using the SPARCstorage Array subsystem can improve NFS performance because its processor manages and schedules disk I/O.

The SPARCstorage Manager software is provided with the disk array and provides similar functionality to Online: Disk Suite software. Since there are often many more disks to manage in the SPARCstorage Array subsystem, the SPARCstorage Manager software has an intuitive GUI interface.

SPARCstorage MultiPack

The SPARCstorage MultiPack^(TM) enclosure, which is fast wide SCSI, can adapt to 50-pin or narrow hosts. The SPARCstorage MultiPack is self-terminating but it can be chained with units that require external termination.

The SPARCstorage MultiPack uses single connector disks and it is hot plugable. The enclosure can either contain from two to six 1.5-inch disk drives or from two to twelve 1-inch disk drives. To accommodate from two to twelve 1-inch disk drives you must use an SBus SCSI host adapter.

Desktop Storage Module

The Desktop Storage Module (disk unit) is an external hard disk drive unit for desktop servers and the SPARCserver series. It contains one full-height 1.3 Gbyte disk drive. Figure 2-12 shows a front view of the Desktop Storage Module.

Figure 2-12

Multi-Disk Pack

The Multi-Disk Pack is a disk expansion unit for the SPARCserver 5, SPARCserver 10, and SPARCserver 20 systems and comes in two configurations:

• Four 1.05 Gbyte fast SCSI disk drives totaling 4.2 Gbytes of disk storage
• Two or four 2.1 Gbyte fast SCSI disk drives totaling 4.2 or 8.4 Gbytes of disk storage

The SCSI addresses are set by SCSI address jumpers on the disk drives. Figure 2-13 shows a front view of the Multi-Disk Pack.

Figure 2-13

SPARCstorage UniPack

The disk model of the SPARCstorage UniPack^(TM) enclosure contains a self terminating hard disk drive. Models containing a tape drive or a CD-ROM drive are also available. The unit is fast wide SCSI and can be adapted to a narrow 50-pin host.

This expansion unit can be used with the following desktop server systems:

• SPARCstation 5 system
• SPARCstation 10 system
• SPARCstation 20 system
• Sun Ultra Enterprise 1 system
• Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 system

Figure 2-14

Desktop Disk Pack

The Desktop Disk Pack is a disk expansion unit that contains one SCSI disk. Some of the disk capacities are:

• 207 Mbyte low profile disk drive
• 424 Mbyte disk drive
• 535 Mbyte low profile disk drive
• 1.05 Gbyte low profile disk drive

The SCSI address is set by a SCSI address switch at the rear of the unit. This expansion unit is useful for the following desktop server systems:

• SPARCstation 5 system
• SPARCstation 10 system
• SPARCstation 20 system

Figure 2-15 illustrates a front view of the Desktop Disk Pack.

Figure 2-15