[K12OSN] Servers, K12LTSP, and workstation numbers, etc.

Tue Jul 25 16:39:40 UTC 2006

On 7/25/06, Doug Simpson <simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us> wrote:
>
> 25 clients per server. . . we'd need about 40 servers. . .They'd never go
> for that. . . I was hoping to be able to serve hundreds per server. . .

If you are going to have hundreds on at the same time running Firefox and
OOo on 1 server (maybe the entire school):

Go Opteron.
A single 2.0 Ghz Opteron can handle about 25 clients. That's about 80 Mhz /
client (BTW Xeons require about 100Mhz/client). If  you get a dual Opteron
MB that supports dual-core cpu's you can put 4 cores it ( two Opteron 270's
) That should be able to support 100 clients simultaneously provided you
have about 80mb ram / client and use Icewm. So you will need 8G ram. Make
sure you have 15K rpm SCSI drives in Raid 1 or 5 with an LSI or 3ware
controller (preferably with it's own cache) and of course a Gigabit NIC on
eth0. The quad cpu motherboards and 800 series Opterons are *VERY*
expensive.

Not a good deal, but. . .
>
> Doug Simpson
> Technology Specialist
> DeQueen Public Schools
> DeQueen, AR 71832
> simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
> Tux for President!
>
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2006, James P. Kinney III wrote:
>
> > It really boils down to networking at the Enterprise model level. Tests
> > have show that a 1Gb data line can support 25 clients.
> >
> > RAM is still king as each client will need 50-75 MB of RAM.
> >
> > We had about 56 clients hanging from a dual Opteron (single core) server
> > w/4GB RAM and dual, bonded Gb NICs. The load level was getting heavy but
> > OK until firefox got loaded. At that point, swap got hit and the box
> > thrashed itself into oblivion. A hard reboot later (and turning OFF
> > swap) and it _could_ run 56 clients but it was dragging.
> >
> > So for the "Bottom dollar" person: a single chip, dual core w/ 2GB RAM
> > and 2 NICs (one Gb for clients, the other 100Mb for Internet) and a
> > 120GB hard drive will serve 25+ clients very well. This a good model for
> > an "app server".
> >
> > On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 10:15 -0500, Doug Simpson wrote:
> > > Hello.
> > >
> > > I finally have got my Superintendent excited about being able to use
> older
> > > hardware to save monty and use K12LTSP for thos older computers to
> make
> > > them usable again in Internet/Research/Writing labs in our schools.
> > >
> > > I have several servers that have K12LTSP installed and ready to go,
> > > thinking I could run many workstations from them.
> > >
> > > But when I read articles that say a district has 32 servers to deploy
> > > K12LTSP, I am thninking I am missing something because where is the
> cost
> > > savings in that, forst of all, and that means server updates and
> > > everything will have to be done on all those servers.
> > >
> > > Our Supt. is a "Bottom Dollar" kind of guy and he doesn't look at TCO
> so
> > > much as what it will cost to "get it in the door".
> > >
> > > Say I have a server with 12GB RAM, Almost a terabyte (sp?) of SCSI
> hard
> > > drive in Raid5 and Gigabit NICs.  Realistically, how many workstations
> can
> > > I hang off there using Gnome, Mozilla, OOo, and several other apps on
> > > intermittent basis and see usable performance?
> > >
> > > Also, I have one server, running FC1 with K12LTSP and it serves DHCP
> IP
> > > addresses, but I want another server to handle the terminals.
> > >
> > > I added the next-server line to dhcpd.conf, but it still looks to the
> FC1
> > > server to boot from. The other (preferred server) is FC3, K12LTSP and
> I
> > > think it is set up correctly.
> > >
> > > What can I look for to make the workstations boot and run from the FC3
> > > server with DHCP being handled by the FC1 server?
> > >
> > > Thanks!
> > >
> > > Doug Simpson
> > > Technology Specialist
> > > DeQueen Public Schools
> > > DeQueen, AR 71832
> > > simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
> > > Tux for President!
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > K12OSN mailing list
> > > K12OSN at redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> > > For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
> > --
> > James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
> > CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
> > Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
> > 770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
> > http://www.localnetsolutions.com
> >
> > GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> > <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> > Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
> >
>
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-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/
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