[K12OSN] More or less servers?

[Barry Solof <barry yellowdog com>]

Hi,

We've finally been given the go ahead to "try" a K12ltsp system in a 
local school. The administrators have been turning the project down for 
two years now because it wasn't Microsoft based.  Now that the school is 
in dire financial trouble and IBM is advertising linux the 
administrators are more willing to "look ahead and be progressive". 

Don't ya love it?

Anyway, there are about 6 classrooms.  Each room will probably get *one* 
cat5 cable installed to a central switch as a favor/donation to the 
school.  It doesn't seem likely we can run a seperate line for every 
computer or terminal to a central switch.

With these limitations in mind, what sort of scenario makes more sense:

a) put one (or two) fast, scsi, ram-heavy costly servers in one location 
to handle 30+ clients?
or
b) put one reasonably quick, ide, ram sufficient cheap server in each 
classroom (with a cheap switch) for 3 -5 clients?

The selling point of the one server per room scenario is that the server 
can easily handle cdroms, usb flash drives, printers, etc.  The floppy 
access of the clients will be sufficient most of the time but there will 
always be somebody needing access to a cd burner or zip device.  Putting 
a server in the classroom makes peripherals a lot simpler in a school 
that has no computer technician available on a day-to-day basis.

Finally, if we go with muliple classroom servers, is it ok to use the 
server as a workstation, too?  Generally the students work consists of 
word processing and web surfing so the load isn't too great.  However, 
it is reasonable to expect the load to increase when they figure out how 
to use things like the gimp.

Many thanks,
Barry Solof