[K12OSN] Several TS's with load balancing?

[Steve Wright]

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 07:06, Trond Mæhlum wrote:
> Is it possible to set up K12LTSP this way:
> 
> One mainserver for authentification and storage (Home)

You really can configure it how you wish.


> Several TS with some sort of load balancing: When you log on you are 
> automatically sent to the TS with most resources available? Also, if one 
> TS goes down the network will still run, but with less capacity...

About a year ago, that idea nearly became "the search for the holy
grail" on this list.  A small group of us knocked the idea nearly to
death, and discovered that it was extremely difficult to load-share a X
connection.  
 The two killers were ;  (a) that X is very session-oriented, and
swapping-around parts of it broke all sorts of rules, and (b) the
'back-to-front' nature of X connections was very hard to load-balance
from the traditional load-balancing perspective.  No existing packages
plugged right in. (this may be different now)


> We use Win2000 TS with Citrix ICA this way. One fileserver and seven TS. 
> You will always log on to the server with the best capasity at that time.


This is being done with LTSP, but if the TS dies - your session dies. 
Sure, you may reconnect and get a new server instantly, but you very
likely lost your work.


> The reason for my question is that I'm setting up 5 schools on via fiber 
> network. We are talking approx. 1500 users... 500-600 terminals.


There is pseudo load-balancing being done where X near-randomly connects
to a Terminal Server.  I am not familiar with it - others may comment.

IMO, the easiest way to do this is ;

Pseudo load-balance as many terminal servers as necessary to handle your
users.  The machines serve desktops only.  All the heavy apps, viz
ooffice.org and mozilla, run on another machine dedicated to that
purpose, each individually connecting directly to your X display.  If
your loading becomes heavy, either add more TS or more app servers
depending on where your bottleneck lays.

and that brings us to your network, at which point I will bow out so
that those who have done it may comment.


cheers,
Steve