[K12OSN] server hardware advice

[Petre Scheie]

For 75 clients, I would recommend using two terminal servers.  Yes, it is physically 
possible to get 8GB RAM into a box now, but you'll have to use 64-bit version of Linux 
and not all applications work under 64-bit; you're just asking for trouble, which is NOT 
the thing to do in the first deployment.  If money is available, the best way would be 
to start with three servers: two terminal servers and one NFS server for /home.  This 
way you can use the NFS server for users' home directories and have it handle 
authentication (use the smbldap script from David and Matt), and also provide those 
services for any Mac and Windows boxes.  You can assign 30-40 clients to each LTSP 
server, and if it proves popular, you can quickly setup another similar server to handle 
another 30-40 clients.  The kids can login on any terminal and their 
environment/setup/files go with them.  For the LTSP servers, to handle 30-40 clients, 
get dual CPUs, 4GB RAM; and normally, SCSI disks are required for this number of users, 
but if user data is all on a separate NFS server (which should have SCSI disks in a 
RAID), SCSI may not be necessary on the LTSP servers (anyone want to comment on this?).

Don't put too many eggs in one basket: Go for stability to begin with, not the maximum 
clients you can squeeze onto one box.  Any time the system is down, people will remember 
that more than how much money you saved.

Petre

fhkms at adelphia.net wrote:
> hi All,
> 
> So, I've potentially been given the opportunity to set my children's school up with k12ltsp (still in the consulting stage at the moment).  They have a liberal budget, but I think they can still spend signifiicantly less if they go with k12ltsp.  My question is: if I was to get a server from Dell or IBM or some other maker, what should it look like for hardware configuration - how many hard drives, Ram, network cards ect?  I'm thinking it would serve 75 thin clients.  Also, It might be in the budget to purchase some of the ready-made thin clients.  I'd like sound to work out of the box, and to not have video issues.  Any recommendations on this?  Thanks!
> 
> Will
> 
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