The Distributed Systems Section (DSS) of the Computer Systems Laboratory and the Laboratory Systems Unit (LSU) of the Computer Center Branch are working jointly on a project to provide support for researchers with 32- bit, UNIX-based, high-performance workstations manufactured by a variety of vendors. The workstations will be interconnected by the NIH campus-wide LAN, by which they will share resources and run applications such as molecular graphics, image processing, and DNA sequencing. Using the Andrew File System (AFS) as a means of accessing the same files on a variety of UNIX workstation clients from different vendors, the staff set up on the DCRT Ethernet two different groups of clients which AFS refers to as a """"""""cell"""""""". One cell is for production-level use, and the other for software testing and development. The CSL issued and received responses to an RFP to purchase up to 16 AFS file server machines and peripherals at a two-million-dollar contract limit over the next three years. Staff will deploy these servers to provide over 50 GB of managed, shareable, network-accessible disk storage to NIH researchers with UNIX workstations. In October, 1989, 39 Silicon Graphics (SGI) workstations with molecular modeling software from Polygen were installed on the NIH campus. DCRT's Network Task Group worked with the ALW staff in finding ways to interconnect the SGI machines with a network. Connected SGI machines will run the Network File System to share files until the AFS 3.0 is ported to them. For all UNIX users on the NIH campus to share a single file system such as AFS, it is necessary for each of them t have a unique UNIX login name and integer id. ALW staff members """"""""remapped"""""""" the existing file systems, so that each user is uniquely identifiable by both login name and number. They have run the remap software on all of DCRT's UNIX systems, as well as all SGI workstations with network connectivity. In addition, they have begun a central-site registry service for UNIX login names and numbers, to avoid overlap.
