SUMMARY: Limits to an X-terminal server

From: grobbins@Kodak.COM
Date: Fri Jan 29 1993 - 15:10:32 CST


Earlier this week, I sent out the following:

>We are planning to serve ~6 Macs as X-terminals running electrical and
>mechanical design software from a Sun. Has anyone quantified the load that
>X-terminals have on the "serving" machine? It may be possible that I could
>dedicate a Sun 4/330 solely for this purpose - any idea how many concurrent
>X-term sessions it can support? I suppose it has a lot to do with what
>applications will be running on the Sun. The elec. and mech. CAD stuff is
>pretty CPU and memory intensive.

The recommendations I got were basically these:
        1) Max out the memory on the 330
        2) Upgrade the 330 to a 630 and max out the memory
In addition to (1) and (2), I have been advised to bump MAXUSERS way up, and to
watch the use of the pseudo tty ports, since each xterm uses one.

My Mac users will be using MacX, and even though I may have 6 potential users
of CAD stuff, I anticipate a max of 2 concurrent users. I think I may have
a chance with the 330. We're looking to hold costs down, so if all it's
going to cost me is some memeory, then that will be great. Otherwise, we'll
probably end up puttig IPX's on people's desks. No reason to dump a large
bunch of $$$ into the 330.

Many thanks to:
stern@sunne.East.Sun.COM (Hal Stern - NE Area Systems Engineer)
bernards@ECN.NL (Marcel Bernards)
cyerkes@jpmorgan.com (Chuck Yerkes)
Christian Lawrence <cal@soac.bellcore.com>
Bill Maggio <bmaggio@dcs.bellcore.com>
storm@geog.utah.edu
sparc!shevett@erika.bighouse.unipress.com (Dave Shevett)
"Marty Leisner" <leisner@gnu>
lora@popcbr.ROCKEFELLER.EDU (Lora Frisch)
ron@drd.com (Ron.Madurski)
mende@piecomputer.rutgers.edu (Bob Mende Pie)
oran@spg.amdahl.com (Oran Davis)
ups!upstage!glenn@fourx.Aus.Sun.COM (Glenn Satchell - Uniq Professional Services)

Gretchen Mittelstaedt
Eastman Kodak Co., Rochester NY
grobbins@kodak.com



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