  Modern HEP experiments require immense amounts of computing power. In the
BaBar experiment at SLAC, most of it is provided by Solaris SPARC systems.
AutoClient, a product of Sun Microsystems, was designed to make setting up and
managing large numbers of Solaris systems more straightforward. AutoClient
machines keep all filesystems, except swap, on a server and employ CacheFS to
cache them onto a local disk, which makes them Field Replaceable Units with
performance of stand-alone systems. We began exploring the technology in Summer
1998, and currently operate online, reconstruction, analysis and console
AutoClient farms with the total number of nodes exceeding 400. Although the
technology has been available since 1995, it has not been widely used, and the
available documentation does not adequately cover many important details of
AutoClient installation and management. This paper discusses various aspects of
our experience with AutoClient, including tips and tricks, performance and
maintainability, scalability and server requirements, existing problems and
possible future enhancements.
