We have our GRASS system at the U. of Illinois GIS lab set up similar
to what you described, with a single GRASS "server" which exports
the binaries to all of our other machines in the laboratory using
Sun NFS. I think it's safe to say that we have rarely, if ever,
experienced a lag time in GRASS execution due to overload on
our network. We present GRASS training workshops using this
setup, which I consider a very good test of system response.
As far as load on a systems admin, exporting the binaries from the
server and mounting them on all other machines should be a rather
simple task that only needs to be set up once.
Scott Tweddale
UofI GIS Lab/USA-CERL