From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 11:06:54 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:06:54 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server Message-ID: Hello, I hope everyone had a good weekend. So I'm waist-deep in the design of our new building. Quite the exercise being in charge of designing nearly everything that runs on electricity in the building! I wanted some recommendations for our new LTSP network please. Details: 1) Total of 65 computers spread out across 3 floors -- library, computer lab, and study lounge are areas of high concentration. 2) All cabling is cat 6 3) All switches and network cards are gigabit and unmanaged. 4) Terminals are 2-3 year old Pentium 4 computers or inexpensive modern computers (IE suitable for local apps or thin client) 5) Distribution is Edubuntu 6) The setup is for an elementary school students, teachers, and admin staff / business meetings. No specific software except OpenOffice and browsing 7) Budget for all servers needed is $2000 (IE: either one server for LTSP or if I needed an application server plus home fileserver total still $2000) I've had an old Proliant DL360 G3 ( http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl360/ ) humming along for a year and supporting our old building of 15 computers no problem. Has dual Xeon 2.8 Ghz chips and 2 GB of ram and usually is underutilized. The bottle-neck is clearly the RAM as every now and then it hits swap. In our new setup it certainly won't be underutilized so I'll certainly need something much more powerful. Should I look for a cutting edge desktop computer (running an Intel-i level chip such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108475 ) or am I better off getting an actual (older) purpose-built server (Such as another proliant)? Final aspect are the hard drives. Personally I'm a huge fan of SCSI drives -- both this server and the prior custom-built servers had rock-solid reliable hard drives that ran non-stop for something like 8 years without a hitch. Of course they were super-expensive with the RAID controller, etc. Would you recommend a SATA raid controller and SATA drives for such a setup nowadays or stick with SCSI? Did I miss anything else? :) Thanks for all your insight! Joseph From news at siddall.name Mon Apr 18 13:30:03 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:30:03 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> Personal opinions: You are definitely going to need more than 2 GB RAM. CPU seems less important. I am running a quad core Phenom II, 8 GB with about 20 clients total, 10 or so being steadily used. No performance issues except it is easy for the GigE to get saturated if there are clients playing video. Video is killer for LTSP. If you don't install flash your life will be better :) I would avoid SCSI drives. Not because they are bad, but because your money could probably be better spent elsewhere. Modern SATA drives perform great. Also, definitely go with RAID1. Not only will it buy you survivability but you get 2X the read performance. Software raid works fine. Avoid RAID5. If you can afford it try SSDs. They will vastly increase the random IO ability of your system which is especially important for LTSP. When you are all done, spend any leftover money on more RAM. 16 GB is definitely not too much. Even if you don't need it for applications the system will use it for cache which will make your server faster. One other thing to consider: building one giant server may not be adequate. 65 clients is a lot! You might be better off building two smaller servers for the same price. You might also run into scaling issues with file handles and whatnot with a large number of logged-in clients. Google for people who ran into that and the resolution they found. Localapps for pig apps like Firefox may help save your server performance. Good luck. Please post your findings once you get things up and running. Jeff From Steven at simplycircus.com Mon Apr 18 13:47:03 2011 From: Steven at simplycircus.com (Steven Santos) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:47:03 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> References: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> Message-ID: Also, think about using your current server again, be it for an app server, or as a dedicated LTSP server for admin. --- Steven Santos Director P: 617-527-0667 F: 617-934-1870 E: Steven at SimplyCircus.com Simply Circus, Inc. 86 Los Angeles Street Newton, MA 02462 On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Jeff Siddall wrote: > Personal opinions: > > You are definitely going to need more than 2 GB RAM. ?CPU seems less > important. ?I am running a quad core Phenom II, 8 GB with about 20 > clients total, 10 or so being steadily used. ?No performance issues > except it is easy for the GigE to get saturated if there are clients > playing video. ?Video is killer for LTSP. ?If you don't install flash > your life will be better :) > > I would avoid SCSI drives. ?Not because they are bad, but because your > money could probably be better spent elsewhere. ?Modern SATA drives > perform great. ?Also, definitely go with RAID1. ?Not only will it buy > you survivability but you get 2X the read performance. ?Software raid > works fine. ?Avoid RAID5. ?If you can afford it try SSDs. ?They will > vastly increase the random IO ability of your system which is especially > important for LTSP. > > When you are all done, spend any leftover money on more RAM. ?16 GB is > definitely not too much. ?Even if you don't need it for applications the > system will use it for cache which will make your server faster. > > One other thing to consider: building one giant server may not be > adequate. ?65 clients is a lot! ?You might be better off building two > smaller servers for the same price. ?You might also run into scaling > issues with file handles and whatnot with a large number of logged-in > clients. ?Google for people who ran into that and the resolution they > found. ?Localapps for pig apps like Firefox may help save your server > performance. > > Good luck. ?Please post your findings once you get things up and running. > > Jeff > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > K12OSN at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn > For more info see > > From microman at cmosnetworks.com Mon Apr 18 15:42:38 2011 From: microman at cmosnetworks.com (Terrell Prude' Jr.) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:42:38 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> I'd suggest buying the parts and building your own box. You get exactly what you want, it's modern, and you can save some cash over buying a "server" box from, say, HP, Dell, etc. For example, I just built a quad-core 3.2GHz AMD box with 8GB DRAM and a 1.5TB SATA disk drive for just under $400. With careful shopping, you could build, say, a 12-core box, with 16GB DRAM, for about $1200. A single-socket 6-processor machine with 16GB DRAM would run about $600. For storage, yes, SCSI drives are very reliable, no doubt. Like you, I've had SCSI disks last 8+ years. However, SATA drives are so cheap by comparison, and disk drive reliability has generally gotten very good over the years. I'd have no big concerns about going SATA nowadays. Since everything's Gigabit, personally, I'd recommend two servers, one for the home directories, and another for the storage. Put them all on the same flat network, just for simplicity, with NFS automount (this is very easy to set up). I'm assuming that Adobe Flash (read: CPU hog) is in play. Since all your terminals are P4's and can handle it, you could run Firefox locally and have everything else run from the LTSP server. The one concern I had with your proposed setup is LTSP bandwidth, specifically with the unmanaged switches. With that many terminals, normally I would suggest Multi-Linking a couple of Gig-E NIC's in the LTSP server. However, the switch needs to support that, and unmanaged switches cannot do that (it's something you need to explicitly configure). So, that means only one Gig-E link to and from your LTSP server for your thin clients. However, there is a way to deal even with that. It's the same method that I figured out some years ago to have i386, PPC, and SPARC thin clients simultaneously running on my x86 LTSP server. Yep, three different client CPU architectures at the same time! :-) How? You separate groups of clients into different physical segments/subnets (SPARC's on one, PPC's on another, x86 on a third). While all your clients are x86, it also has a very nice side benefit that applies to your situation: spreading bandwidth usage out and relieving congestion. Consider the standard 2-NIC LTSP server setup. There's the "outside" link and the "inside" link. We'll call the outside link "eth0" and the inside link "eth1" (you can do it either way, but that's just my mood this morning). Eth0 is connected to your main school LAN (we'll say 10.0.0.0/22), and eth1 is hooked up to your terminals (we'll say 192.168.1.0/24). But you discover that 65 clients on the eth1 segment are just too much for that Gig-E segment, and users are complaining that "the system feels slow." No problem. Drop a second NIC in that server and call it "eth2". Give it 192.168.2.0/24 and copy 'n' paste an appropriate DHCP scope for this subnet in dhcpd.conf (I just use the "eth1" segment as a template). Take one of your unmanaged switches for the thin client and hook it up to this new eth2, and move some of your thin clients to this new segment. Remember, the new segment is ONLY connected to eth2; it doesn't, and must not, touch eth1 at all. When you fire up a client on this segment, it should get a 192.168.2.x IP address. Now each of your Gig-E NIC's is serving only, say, 30 clients apiece instead of 65. Think of it as a "poor man's Multi-Link". All you're doing here is simply adding on a second internal LTSP subnet. In your scenario, you could add not just an "eth2", but also an "eth3" and have 22 computers per thin-client segment. That would most certainly solve any bandwidth issues. Obviously one could take this to an "eth4", "eth5", etc. if one wanted to do that and had that many PCI slots. At that point, though, I'd just go for a 10Gb NIC. :-) --TP Joseph Bishay wrote: > Hello, > > I hope everyone had a good weekend. > > So I'm waist-deep in the design of our new building. Quite the > exercise being in charge of designing nearly everything that runs on > electricity in the building! > > I wanted some recommendations for our new LTSP network please. Details: > > 1) Total of 65 computers spread out across 3 floors -- library, > computer lab, and study lounge are areas of high concentration. > 2) All cabling is cat 6 > 3) All switches and network cards are gigabit and unmanaged. > 4) Terminals are 2-3 year old Pentium 4 computers or inexpensive > modern computers (IE suitable for local apps or thin client) > 5) Distribution is Edubuntu > 6) The setup is for an elementary school students, teachers, and admin > staff / business meetings. No specific software except OpenOffice and > browsing > 7) Budget for all servers needed is $2000 (IE: either one server for > LTSP or if I needed an application server plus home fileserver total > still $2000) > > I've had an old Proliant DL360 G3 ( > http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl360/ ) humming > along for a year and supporting our old building of 15 computers no > problem. Has dual Xeon 2.8 Ghz chips and 2 GB of ram and usually is > underutilized. The bottle-neck is clearly the RAM as every now and > then it hits swap. In our new setup it certainly won't be > underutilized so I'll certainly need something much more powerful. > > Should I look for a cutting edge desktop computer (running an Intel-i > level chip such as this: > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108475 ) or > am I better off getting an actual (older) purpose-built server (Such > as another proliant)? > > Final aspect are the hard drives. Personally I'm a huge fan of SCSI > drives -- both this server and the prior custom-built servers had > rock-solid reliable hard drives that ran non-stop for something like 8 > years without a hitch. Of course they were super-expensive with the > RAID controller, etc. Would you recommend a SATA raid controller and > SATA drives for such a setup nowadays or stick with SCSI? > > Did I miss anything else? :) > > Thanks for all your insight! > Joseph > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > K12OSN at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn > For more info see > From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 16:29:37 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:29:37 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> References: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> Message-ID: Hello, On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Jeff Siddall wrote: > Personal opinions: > > You are definitely going to need more than 2 GB RAM. ?CPU seems less > important. ?I am running a quad core Phenom II, 8 GB with about 20 > clients total, 10 or so being steadily used. Is there a link to your specific type of machine so I can learn more about pricing / specs? > No performance issues > except it is easy for the GigE to get saturated if there are clients > playing video. ?Video is killer for LTSP. ?If you don't install flash > your life will be better :) Unfortunately as this is an elementary school, as much as I'd love to not have flash, I know it will be 100% required :) > I would avoid SCSI drives. ?Not because they are bad, but because your > money could probably be better spent elsewhere. ?Modern SATA drives > perform great. ?Also, definitely go with RAID1. ?Not only will it buy > you survivability but you get 2X the read performance. ?Software raid > works fine. ?Avoid RAID5. ?If you can afford it try SSDs. ?They will > vastly increase the random IO ability of your system which is especially > important for LTSP. Would you say that the much higher cost of SSD and their read/write lifespan limits are still better than SCSI? I've been running RAID1 so I'd continue to do that for sure. > You might be better off building two > smaller servers for the same price. ?You might also run into scaling > issues with file handles and whatnot with a large number of logged-in > clients. ?Google for people who ran into that and the resolution they > found. I have been thinking about this but this would be entirely new for me so I'm a bit hesitant. I also need to be able to sync the /home directories of a small sub-set of users when they log out with another remote server so I'm not sure if one location has a all-in-one LTSP server and the other has a different multi-server configuration if it will easily work or not. > Localapps for pig apps like Firefox may help save your server performance. This may be the cleanest solution as 90% of the time people will be running Firefox. > Good luck. ?Please post your findings once you get things up and running. Will do! Joseph From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 16:32:24 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:32:24 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> Message-ID: Hello, On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:47 AM, Steven Santos wrote: > Also, think about using your current server again, be it for an app > server, or as a dedicated LTSP server for admin. Our existing server and network will still be utilized as we're not migrating but expanding. I actually will need to sync the two server's /home but that was addressed in another post a couple weeks back and I think it will be easy to do. If I was to make a specific server for admin would that not limit where they can log in from? IE: these terminals are on the "Students" LTSP server while these are on the "admin" server and thus potentially cause confusion? Joseph From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Mon Apr 18 16:55:03 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:55:03 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: Good day Terrell, On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: > I'd suggest buying the parts and building your own box. ?You get exactly > what you want, it's modern, and you can save some cash over buying a > "server" box from, say, HP, Dell, etc. ?For example, I just built a > quad-core 3.2GHz AMD box with 8GB DRAM and a 1.5TB SATA disk drive for just > under $400. ?With careful shopping, you could build, say, a 12-core box, > with 16GB DRAM, for about $1200. ?A single-socket 6-processor machine with > 16GB DRAM would run about $600. May I ask where you obtained your parts from? > For storage, yes, SCSI drives are very reliable, no doubt. ?Like you, I've > had SCSI disks last 8+ years. ?However, SATA drives are so cheap by > comparison, and disk drive reliability has generally gotten very good over > the years. ?I'd have no big concerns about going SATA nowadays. Do you have a preference for hardware vs software SATA Raid? > Since everything's Gigabit, personally, I'd recommend two servers, one for > the home directories, and another for the storage. ?Put them all on the same > flat network, just for simplicity, with NFS automount (this is very easy to > set up). ?I'm assuming that Adobe Flash (read: CPU hog) is in play. ?Since > all your terminals are P4's and can handle it, you could run Firefox locally > and have everything else run from the LTSP server. I do want to consider this option -- I just need to make sure it's not overly complex since I may not be the only person maintaining it. I also do want to make sure I can run firefox locally since that's about 90% of the computer usage. > normally I would suggest Multi-Linking a couple of Gig-E NIC's in the LTSP > server. ?However, the switch needs to support that, and unmanaged switches > cannot do that (it's something you need to explicitly configure). ?So, that > means only one Gig-E link to and from your LTSP server for your thin > clients. I had specified unmanaged switches as they are cheaper and I've had good experience with them. IF it was a deal-breaker or a significant performance boost I could swing a managed switch but I'd need to understand all the pros / cons. < Snipped very clear explanation about aggregating NICs > > All you're doing here is simply adding on a second internal LTSP subnet. ?In > your scenario, you could add not just an "eth2", but also an "eth3" and have > 22 computers per thin-client segment. ?That would most certainly solve any > bandwidth issues. ?Obviously one could take this to an "eth4", "eth5", etc. > if one wanted to do that and had that many PCI slots. ?At that point, > though, I'd just go for a 10Gb NIC. ?:-) I had played around with this a few years back before I learned that my switch can't handle it. A point that was raised at the time that the PCI bus on the server wouldn't really be able to suppose two gigabit NICs at full-speed anyways so it's not that relevant. Is that still the case now or is it a matter of the type of motherboard being used, etc? Thank you Joseph From news at siddall.name Mon Apr 18 17:22:58 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:22:58 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC3CDB.2090909@siddall.name> Message-ID: <4DAC7372.10005@siddall.name> On 04/18/2011 12:29 PM, Joseph Bishay wrote: > Hello, > > On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:30 AM, Jeff Siddall wrote: >> Personal opinions: >> >> You are definitely going to need more than 2 GB RAM. CPU seems less >> important. I am running a quad core Phenom II, 8 GB with about 20 >> clients total, 10 or so being steadily used. > > Is there a link to your specific type of machine so I can learn more > about pricing / specs? Nope, I build all my machines from scratch. If you are looking at using desktop PC parts (ie: <$2,000 systems) it is the best way to optimize performance. You get exactly what you want, nothing you don't. Have a look at some parts like these as a starting point: 6 core 3.2 GHz CPU: about $200: http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=63169 16 GB DDR3: about $225: http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=68257 50 GB RevoDrive: about $205 each: http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_details.php?pid=65758 Add a motherboard of your choosing and case/PS for another $200 and you have a pretty quick server for less than $1000. If you need bulk storage throw in a 2TB drive but if possible keep root and home dirs on the SSD. >> No performance issues >> except it is easy for the GigE to get saturated if there are clients >> playing video. Video is killer for LTSP. If you don't install flash >> your life will be better :) > > Unfortunately as this is an elementary school, as much as I'd love to > not have flash, I know it will be 100% required :) Yeah, maybe look at adding an extra NIC and splitting your clients or doing a MLT. Someone else posted detailed instructions on splitting the clients. >> I would avoid SCSI drives. Not because they are bad, but because your >> money could probably be better spent elsewhere. Modern SATA drives >> perform great. Also, definitely go with RAID1. Not only will it buy >> you survivability but you get 2X the read performance. Software raid >> works fine. Avoid RAID5. If you can afford it try SSDs. They will >> vastly increase the random IO ability of your system which is especially >> important for LTSP. > > Would you say that the much higher cost of SSD and their read/write > lifespan limits are still better than SCSI? The lifespan will probably be less for a SSD but they have been making those for a lot of years now so I don't think you will have problems in the short term. As for performance, the RevoDrive I referenced above will blow the doors off _any_ platter drive at _any_ price -- SCSI or otherwise. Even if you want to stick with platter drives SATA still performs well. I did an rsync to my RAID1 array of relatively slow WD RE2 GP drives and was getting sustained _write_ speeds of well over 200 MB/s. Not too shabby. Either way, the killer for platters is random IO and a SCSI drive can't get the heads to a chunk of data any quicker than a SATA drive with the same speed/platter configuration. > I've been running RAID1 so I'd continue to do that for sure. > >> You might be better off building two >> smaller servers for the same price. You might also run into scaling >> issues with file handles and whatnot with a large number of logged-in >> clients. Google for people who ran into that and the resolution they >> found. > > I have been thinking about this but this would be entirely new for me > so I'm a bit hesitant. I also need to be able to sync the /home > directories of a small sub-set of users when they log out with another > remote server so I'm not sure if one location has a all-in-one LTSP > server and the other has a different multi-server configuration if it > will easily work or not. If you have to sacrifice things like SSD and RAM to get to two servers there probably isn't much benefit -- especially if you keep bandwidth intensive stuff like flash on the clients. >> Localapps for pig apps like Firefox may help save your server performance. > > This may be the cleanest solution as 90% of the time people will be > running Firefox. Definitely do that if you can. Everyone will be happier. Jeff From microman at cmosnetworks.com Tue Apr 19 04:47:41 2011 From: microman at cmosnetworks.com (Terrell Prude' Jr.) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:47:41 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Joseph Bishay wrote: > Good day Terrell, > > On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. > wrote: > >> I'd suggest buying the parts and building your own box. You get exactly >> what you want, it's modern, and you can save some cash over buying a >> "server" box from, say, HP, Dell, etc. For example, I just built a >> quad-core 3.2GHz AMD box with 8GB DRAM and a 1.5TB SATA disk drive for just >> under $400. With careful shopping, you could build, say, a 12-core box, >> with 16GB DRAM, for about $1200. A single-socket 6-processor machine with >> 16GB DRAM would run about $600. >> > > May I ask where you obtained your parts from? > > I bought 'em at my local Micro Center on sale. Gotta love those sales. :-) >> For storage, yes, SCSI drives are very reliable, no doubt. Like you, I've >> had SCSI disks last 8+ years. However, SATA drives are so cheap by >> comparison, and disk drive reliability has generally gotten very good over >> the years. I'd have no big concerns about going SATA nowadays. >> > > Do you have a preference for hardware vs software SATA Raid? > Yes. I prefer hardware RAID whenever possible. There are two reasons. The first is that the work of maintaining the RAID falls to the RAID card's processor instead of your CPU. The second is that the RAID card will abstract the array so that you don't need to worry about how to do /boot, for example. It's just easier, especially for the next person coming in to maintain it. > >> Since everything's Gigabit, personally, I'd recommend two servers, one for >> the home directories, and another for the storage. Put them all on the same >> flat network, just for simplicity, with NFS automount (this is very easy to >> set up). I'm assuming that Adobe Flash (read: CPU hog) is in play. Since >> all your terminals are P4's and can handle it, you could run Firefox locally >> and have everything else run from the LTSP server. >> > > I do want to consider this option -- I just need to make sure it's not > overly complex since I may not be the only person maintaining it. I > also do want to make sure I can run firefox locally since that's about > 90% of the computer usage. > Automount's a snap. I had to learn it for the RHEL cert exams, and I couldn't believe how easy it was. Why I hadn't been using it for years before is now beyond me. > >> normally I would suggest Multi-Linking a couple of Gig-E NIC's in the LTSP >> server. However, the switch needs to support that, and unmanaged switches >> cannot do that (it's something you need to explicitly configure). So, that >> means only one Gig-E link to and from your LTSP server for your thin >> clients. >> > > I had specified unmanaged switches as they are cheaper and I've had > good experience with them. IF it was a deal-breaker or a significant > performance boost I could swing a managed switch but I'd need to > understand all the pros / cons. > Pros: you have a lot more flexibility with what you can do. VLANs, MultiLink, broadcast storm protection, etc. Cons: they cost more. >> All you're doing here is simply adding on a second internal LTSP subnet. In >> your scenario, you could add not just an "eth2", but also an "eth3" and have >> 22 computers per thin-client segment. That would most certainly solve any >> bandwidth issues. Obviously one could take this to an "eth4", "eth5", etc. >> if one wanted to do that and had that many PCI slots. At that point, >> though, I'd just go for a 10Gb NIC. :-) >> > > I had played around with this a few years back before I learned that > my switch can't handle it. A point that was raised at the time that > the PCI bus on the server wouldn't really be able to suppose two > gigabit NICs at full-speed anyways so it's not that relevant. Is that > still the case now or is it a matter of the type of motherboard being > used, etc? > Depends on your mobo. Back in the dual Athlon MP days, I had a Tyan Tiger MP which had little difficulty keeping up with two Gig-E NIC's. Of course, I was running said NIC's in 64-bit PCI-X slots, each of which was on a separate PCI-X bus. :-) Nowadays, with PCI-e, bandwidth concerns are a total non-issue. Today's monster CPU's have little difficulty pushing multiple 10Gig-E, cards, so multiple Gig-E NIC's, as I'm describing, should be no problem. The key is to keep them on separate PCI buses (PCI-e does this naturally, like SATA does). --TP From julius at turtle.com Tue Apr 19 12:02:20 2011 From: julius at turtle.com (Julius Szelagiewicz) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:02:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'll chime in on SATA drives. I've been running SATA arrays witout any problems for a few years now. I still prefer SCSI, but it's hard to beat SATA price. julius On Mon, 18 Apr 2011, Joseph Bishay wrote: > Hello, > > I hope everyone had a good weekend. > > So I'm waist-deep in the design of our new building. Quite the > exercise being in charge of designing nearly everything that runs on > electricity in the building! > > I wanted some recommendations for our new LTSP network please. Details: > > 1) Total of 65 computers spread out across 3 floors -- library, > computer lab, and study lounge are areas of high concentration. > 2) All cabling is cat 6 > 3) All switches and network cards are gigabit and unmanaged. > 4) Terminals are 2-3 year old Pentium 4 computers or inexpensive > modern computers (IE suitable for local apps or thin client) > 5) Distribution is Edubuntu > 6) The setup is for an elementary school students, teachers, and admin > staff / business meetings. No specific software except OpenOffice and > browsing > 7) Budget for all servers needed is $2000 (IE: either one server for > LTSP or if I needed an application server plus home fileserver total > still $2000) > > I've had an old Proliant DL360 G3 ( > http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantdl360/ ) humming > along for a year and supporting our old building of 15 computers no > problem. Has dual Xeon 2.8 Ghz chips and 2 GB of ram and usually is > underutilized. The bottle-neck is clearly the RAM as every now and > then it hits swap. In our new setup it certainly won't be > underutilized so I'll certainly need something much more powerful. > > Should I look for a cutting edge desktop computer (running an Intel-i > level chip such as this: > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883108475 ) or > am I better off getting an actual (older) purpose-built server (Such > as another proliant)? > > Final aspect are the hard drives. Personally I'm a huge fan of SCSI > drives -- both this server and the prior custom-built servers had > rock-solid reliable hard drives that ran non-stop for something like 8 > years without a hitch. Of course they were super-expensive with the > RAID controller, etc. Would you recommend a SATA raid controller and > SATA drives for such a setup nowadays or stick with SCSI? > > Did I miss anything else? :) > > Thanks for all your insight! > Joseph > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > K12OSN at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn > For more info see > From news at siddall.name Tue Apr 19 14:08:27 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:08:27 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> On 04/19/2011 12:47 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: >> Do you have a preference for hardware vs software SATA Raid? >> > > Yes. I prefer hardware RAID whenever possible. There are two reasons. > The first is that the work of maintaining the RAID falls to the RAID > card's processor instead of your CPU. The second is that the RAID card > will abstract the array so that you don't need to worry about how to do > /boot, for example. It's just easier, especially for the next person > coming in to maintain it. Except... if you are using the "hardware" RAID built into your motherboard your drives may not work in another motherboard, so you have to think carefully about possible failure scenarios and recovery. Software RAID1 on the other hand will work on ANY hardware and you can boot off it also so there are no worries there. Since there is no checksum to calculate there is no significant CPU load either. I have been using software RAID1 for the better part of a decade now with no issues. Personally I would place more confidence in it than the RAID built into a MOBO but others may disagree. Also, like I said avoid RAID5 even if you have a real hardware controller. The loss of performance and reliability is just not worth the savings given how large and cheap modern SATA drives are. Jeff From johno at islandwood.org Tue Apr 19 14:24:28 2011 From: johno at islandwood.org (John Oligario) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 07:24:28 -0700 Subject: [K12OSN] Linux ltsp cosco 7940 w2k8 dhcp Message-ID: Hi all Thank you in advance fir reading and/or responding I am at a nonprofit school. Am needing to know if there is a way so systems and phones get ip address from same windows server setup on dhcp Currently I have to assign them. Or how about dhcp on Linux? Cisco 7940 are not on poe and no switches are Poe anywhere. From lesmikesell at gmail.com Tue Apr 19 15:45:21 2011 From: lesmikesell at gmail.com (Les Mikesell) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:45:21 -0500 Subject: [K12OSN] Linux ltsp cosco 7940 w2k8 dhcp In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4DADAE11.9040700@gmail.com> On 4/19/2011 9:24 AM, John Oligario wrote: > Hi all > Thank you in advance fir reading and/or responding > > I am at a nonprofit school. Am needing to know if there is a way so systems and phones get ip address from same windows server setup on dhcp > Currently I have to assign them. Yes, that should be possible. > Or how about dhcp on Linux? Yes, but I don't think you can mix/match dhcp services on the same subnet between windows/linux servers. Are you running k12ltsp or k12linux servers doing pxe booting? It's not hard to make them handle other systems and/or subnets as long as they are connected directly or through routers that can relay the dhcp requests (the ip-helper setting on Ciscos). > Cisco 7940 are not on poe and no switches are Poe anywhere. This is irrelevant to dhcp, but if you are running ip phones it is usually easier to give them backup power through a central poe switch. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com From microman at cmosnetworks.com Tue Apr 19 16:05:50 2011 From: microman at cmosnetworks.com (Terrell Prude' Jr.) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:05:50 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> Message-ID: <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> Jeff Siddall wrote: > On 04/19/2011 12:47 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: > >>> Do you have a preference for hardware vs software SATA Raid? >>> >>> >> Yes. I prefer hardware RAID whenever possible. There are two reasons. >> The first is that the work of maintaining the RAID falls to the RAID >> card's processor instead of your CPU. The second is that the RAID card >> will abstract the array so that you don't need to worry about how to do >> /boot, for example. It's just easier, especially for the next person >> coming in to maintain it. >> > > Except... if you are using the "hardware" RAID built into your > motherboard your drives may not work in another motherboard, so you have > to think carefully about possible failure scenarios and recovery. > > Software RAID1 on the other hand will work on ANY hardware and you can > boot off it also so there are no worries there. Since there is no > checksum to calculate there is no significant CPU load either. > > I have been using software RAID1 for the better part of a decade now > with no issues. Personally I would place more confidence in it than the > RAID built into a MOBO but others may disagree. > > Also, like I said avoid RAID5 even if you have a real hardware > controller. The loss of performance and reliability is just not worth > the savings given how large and cheap modern SATA drives are. > No, I mean *real* hardware RAID, not that fake stuff built into so many motherboards (I'm with ya there). I'm referring to stuff like the LSI Logic MegaRAID cards (except the 8200 and 9200 series), which perform pretty decently and are 100% supported by Free Software. The MegaRAID 150-6 remains one of my favorite SATA RAID cards to this day. I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending on the specific situation, would also work well. --TP From lesmikesell at gmail.com Tue Apr 19 16:19:03 2011 From: lesmikesell at gmail.com (Les Mikesell) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:19:03 -0500 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DADB5F7.2050100@gmail.com> On 4/19/2011 11:05 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: > > I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it > certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very > efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending > on the specific situation, would also work well. For things that can fit on a single drive, software raid1 has the advantage of letting you easily recover the data from any disk that survives any kind of disaster, on any machine with a physically compatible controller. And if you can use a mount point layout that distributes the load/activity across several raid sets your real-world performance will probably be as good or better than raid10 even if the 'big sequential file' benchmarks aren't as fast. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com From rowens at ptd.net Tue Apr 19 21:57:27 2011 From: rowens at ptd.net (Rob Owens) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:57:27 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DADB5F7.2050100@gmail.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> <4DADB5F7.2050100@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20110419215726.GA30619@aurora.owens.net> On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 11:19:03AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > On 4/19/2011 11:05 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: > > > >I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it > >certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very > >efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending > >on the specific situation, would also work well. > > For things that can fit on a single drive, software raid1 has the > advantage of letting you easily recover the data from any disk that > survives any kind of disaster, on any machine with a physically > compatible controller. And if you can use a mount point layout that > distributes the load/activity across several raid sets your > real-world performance will probably be as good or better than > raid10 even if the 'big sequential file' benchmarks aren't as fast. > Would a hardware RAID 1 disk be recoverable without the hardware RAID controller? I guess I'm asking if hardware RAID 1 is simply a mirror, or if the controllers do something funny to the drives which makes them unreadable without that controller. -Rob From lesmikesell at gmail.com Tue Apr 19 22:14:39 2011 From: lesmikesell at gmail.com (Les Mikesell) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 17:14:39 -0500 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <20110419215726.GA30619@aurora.owens.net> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> <4DADB5F7.2050100@gmail.com> <20110419215726.GA30619@aurora.owens.net> Message-ID: <4DAE094F.50509@gmail.com> On 4/19/2011 4:57 PM, Rob Owens wrote: > On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 11:19:03AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: >> On 4/19/2011 11:05 AM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: >>> >>> I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it >>> certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very >>> efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending >>> on the specific situation, would also work well. >> >> For things that can fit on a single drive, software raid1 has the >> advantage of letting you easily recover the data from any disk that >> survives any kind of disaster, on any machine with a physically >> compatible controller. And if you can use a mount point layout that >> distributes the load/activity across several raid sets your >> real-world performance will probably be as good or better than >> raid10 even if the 'big sequential file' benchmarks aren't as fast. >> > Would a hardware RAID 1 disk be recoverable without the hardware RAID > controller? I guess I'm asking if hardware RAID 1 is simply a mirror, > or if the controllers do something funny to the drives which makes them > unreadable without that controller. It probably depends on the controller. I'd expect to be able to move the drive(s) to an identical controller type but not necessarily a different brand. They usually add something that lets them identify the drives but in the case of raid1 (only) you might have some chance of reading them on a non-raid controller. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com From news at siddall.name Wed Apr 20 01:13:58 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 21:13:58 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DAE3356.7010600@siddall.name> On 04/19/2011 12:05 PM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: >> Also, like I said avoid RAID5 even if you have a real hardware >> controller. The loss of performance and reliability is just not worth >> the savings given how large and cheap modern SATA drives are. > > I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it > certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very > efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending > on the specific situation, would also work well. I used to run RAID5 also but after I had a number of RE2 disk failures (thankfully never two before the array was rebuilt) and noticed some of the related performance problems I went to RAID1. Have a look here for some arguments: http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt Jeff From gianugo.altieri at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 06:59:30 2011 From: gianugo.altieri at gmail.com (Gianugo Altieri) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:59:30 +0200 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAE3356.7010600@siddall.name> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD975B.1020803@siddall.name> <4DADB2DE.4020907@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAE3356.7010600@siddall.name> Message-ID: <4DAE8452.1020403@gmail.com> If you chose Fedora, please note that by using any software RAID for the /boot partition, you won't be able, later, to upgrade the system using the handy "preupgrade" command. By repetitive use of "preupgrade" we are now able to run a K12 over a F14 with no glitches. "preupgrade" requires either a hardware RAID for /boot or a single drive partition, but won't work on a RAID boot partition. We chose to partition the disk so that /boot appears on a single drive and everything else is mirrored on RAID1. Best Gianugo Altieri On 04/20/2011 03:13 AM, Jeff Siddall wrote: > On 04/19/2011 12:05 PM, Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote: > >>> Also, like I said avoid RAID5 even if you have a real hardware >>> controller. The loss of performance and reliability is just not worth >>> the savings given how large and cheap modern SATA drives are. >>> >> I am actually a fan of RAID 5 for a lot of situations, as I find it >> certainly fast enough for my purposes, plenty reliable, and very >> efficient with storage. But a RAID 1 or even "RAID 10" setup, depending >> on the specific situation, would also work well. >> > I used to run RAID5 also but after I had a number of RE2 disk failures > (thankfully never two before the array was rebuilt) and noticed some of > the related performance problems I went to RAID1. Have a look here for > some arguments: > > http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt > > Jeff > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > K12OSN at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn > For more info see > From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 13:55:20 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 09:55:20 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: Hello everyone, The feedback has helped tremendously with spec'ing out the new machine for us. The key points so far that I have are: 1) SATA RAID 1 drives for space, SSD for OS & /tmp 2) 16 GB RAM 3) three gigabit NICs (one to switch for computer lab, one for rest of school, plus a third for Internet access) 4) local-apps for firefox/OpenOffice to alleviate some load The little shop I deal with has recommended the Intel Core i7-960 3.2ghz 8M Cache 4 Core CPU or the Intel Core i7-970 3.2ghz 12M Cache 6 Core processors. However the vast majority of online reading I've done says for "servers" or intensive-use applications (which I'd assume LTSP falls under!) you're better off with the new Xeon series of chips. Any thoughts on this? The machine is slowly coming together! Thank you Joseph From news at siddall.name Wed Apr 20 14:56:17 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:56:17 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DAEF411.4020201@siddall.name> On 04/20/2011 09:55 AM, Joseph Bishay wrote: > Hello everyone, > > The feedback has helped tremendously with spec'ing out the new machine > for us. The key points so far that I have are: > > 1) SATA RAID 1 drives for space, SSD for OS & /tmp > 2) 16 GB RAM > 3) three gigabit NICs (one to switch for computer lab, one for rest of > school, plus a third for Internet access) > 4) local-apps for firefox/OpenOffice to alleviate some load > > The little shop I deal with has recommended the Intel Core i7-960 > 3.2ghz 8M Cache 4 Core CPU or the Intel Core i7-970 3.2ghz 12M Cache 6 > Core processors. However the vast majority of online reading I've > done says for "servers" or intensive-use applications (which I'd > assume LTSP falls under!) you're better off with the new Xeon series > of chips. My experience has been that RAM, disk and network performance are all far more important than CPU speed. My relatively slow quad core server runs at about 90% idle during busy hours but disk and network can get tapped out, and of course all the spare RAM is used for cache. That being said as with anything else the more you spend the more you get. Same is true for Xeons. They are targeted at servers and thus have optimizations like lots of cache. However, there is a price penalty for this so you need to decide what you can afford and if it is a good use of your funds. Have a look here for CPU benchmarks: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php Those are useful to get an idea what you can expect. The Core i7 970 you mention above is a nice CPU for sure, but at $580 it is 285% more expensive than the $203 Phenom II 1090T but is only about 65% faster. If you need the fastest thing money can but Intel is the only thing you should consider. Otherwise think about AMD. One more thought: on a system with a large number of users I would tend to go with more slower cores rather than fewer faster cores. Occasional runaway processes will essentially kill a core. The more cores you have the less likely it is anyone will see a big performance hit. Jeff From microman at cmosnetworks.com Wed Apr 20 15:06:23 2011 From: microman at cmosnetworks.com (Terrell Prude' Jr.) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:06:23 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: <4DAEF66F.1050208@cmosnetworks.com> For LTSP, the more cores, the better, especially with the number of users you're talking about. I'd rather have a 6-core at 2.8 GHz than a 4-core at 3.2. The reason is all the processes that you're running at once. In your situation with possibly 65 users at once, I'd really rather have 12. The bigger on-die cache in the CPU, the better, too. It's all about how much money you're willing to spend. CPU's are fast enough now that I would have no problem with any of the so-called "desktop" processors doing most server duty. However, if I need more than one CPU socket, i. e. a lot of cores, that's when I'd consider a so-called "server" processor. Been eyeing and lusting certain Tyan dual-socket motherboards for a while.... :-) If you're thinking about the Xeon, that's higher end, so if you're going there, then consider that AMD also has 8- and 12-core Opterons, with a 16-core on the way. Remember that a lot of "little shops"--heck, "big shops", too--get financial rebates to push certain products, and the more expensive, the better, so I've learned over the years to take any such recommendations with a grain of salt. Better to do your own research. Good idea for segmenting the computer lab and the rest of the school. --TP Joseph Bishay wrote: > Hello everyone, > > The feedback has helped tremendously with spec'ing out the new machine > for us. The key points so far that I have are: > > 1) SATA RAID 1 drives for space, SSD for OS & /tmp > 2) 16 GB RAM > 3) three gigabit NICs (one to switch for computer lab, one for rest of > school, plus a third for Internet access) > 4) local-apps for firefox/OpenOffice to alleviate some load > > The little shop I deal with has recommended the Intel Core i7-960 > 3.2ghz 8M Cache 4 Core CPU or the Intel Core i7-970 3.2ghz 12M Cache 6 > Core processors. However the vast majority of online reading I've > done says for "servers" or intensive-use applications (which I'd > assume LTSP falls under!) you're better off with the new Xeon series > of chips. > > Any thoughts on this? The machine is slowly coming together! > > Thank you > Joseph > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > K12OSN at redhat.com > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn > For more info see > From joseph.bishay at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 15:18:14 2011 From: joseph.bishay at gmail.com (Joseph Bishay) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:18:14 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: <4DAEF519.7090004@deltacfax.com> References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAEF519.7090004@deltacfax.com> Message-ID: Hello, On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Tim Born wrote: > Joseph Bishay wrote: >> 1) SATA RAID 1 drives for space, SSD for OS & /tmp > You might consider /tmp as a ramdisk since it gets written to a lot, and > you really don't care about preserving it to disk. > Your SSD will last longer and go farther with /tmp in RAM. > -tim You are entirely correct -- I should have said /tmp in RAM Thank you Joseph From robark at gmail.com Wed Apr 20 17:18:32 2011 From: robark at gmail.com (Robert Arkiletian) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:18:32 -0700 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAEF519.7090004@deltacfax.com> Message-ID: if you can afford it I recommend server grade hardware (not desktop hardware). I personally have had good luck with affordable whitebox Supermicro stuff. The built in server grade intel nics are far better than desktop nics. Also use server grade sata drives like the WD RE4. The ram is also ecc reg. You can buy a pretty nice dual socket system for 3-4K. -- Robert Arkiletian Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada From burke at thealmquists.net Wed Apr 20 17:18:55 2011 From: burke at thealmquists.net (Burke Almquist) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:18:55 -0500 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> Message-ID: On Apr 20, 2011, at 8:55 AM, Joseph Bishay wrote: > > > The little shop I deal with has recommended the Intel Core i7-960 > 3.2ghz 8M Cache 4 Core CPU or the Intel Core i7-970 3.2ghz 12M Cache 6 > Core processors. However the vast majority of online reading I've > done says for "servers" or intensive-use applications (which I'd > assume LTSP falls under!) you're better off with the new Xeon series > of chips. If you have the extra money for a xeon, your cash is better spend on two more disks, creating a RAID 10 setup, especially if you have a lot of users. From news at siddall.name Wed Apr 20 18:32:39 2011 From: news at siddall.name (Jeff Siddall) Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:32:39 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server In-Reply-To: References: <4DAC5BEE.60700@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAD13ED.9060900@cmosnetworks.com> <4DAEF519.7090004@deltacfax.com> Message-ID: <4DAF26C7.7010508@siddall.name> On 04/20/2011 01:18 PM, Robert Arkiletian wrote: > if you can afford it I recommend server grade hardware (not desktop > hardware). I personally have had good luck with affordable whitebox > Supermicro stuff. The built in server grade intel nics are far better > than desktop nics. Also use server grade sata drives like the WD RE4. > The ram is also ecc reg. You can buy a pretty nice dual socket system > for 3-4K. I agree about the NICs being better and the ECC RAM also being a nice thing, but honestly I have not had any serious issues with the "desktop" grade servers I have built in the past decade or so. Avoid cheap power supplies and fans and you will probably be fine. Using desktop grade hardware has a side benefit that it can save enough money to allow the purchase of a hardware "spare" that is ready to go in case of failure of a production server. I am currently working on some scripts that will sync up the disks on the spare server with the production servers every night so the spare server is almost "warm". My goal is to have it check the network on power-on and automatically insert itself in place of a failed production server if it detects one is down. It is not progressing very fast but if I ever get it working I'll post the scripts in case others want to use it. About hard drives I always used enterprise grade SATA drives assuming they were better quality. However, after a batch of problems with WD RE2s and an issue with a Seagate ES.2 I am not so sure. The TLER stuff is probably still useful but there is a significant price gap from the desktop versions. For non-critical/non-RAID stuff (ex: backups) I just use desktop grade drives now though all my RAID arrays still use enterprise disks. Jeff From dtrask at vcsvikings.org Wed Apr 27 03:20:12 2011 From: dtrask at vcsvikings.org (David Trask) Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:20:12 -0400 Subject: [K12OSN] You deserve great professional development....FOSSed 2011 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://www.fossed.com I'm writing to let you know that you deserve great professional development. It's simple as that. Now...a little more... If you've been to FOSSed you have some idea of what I'm talking about. Some conferences are great "dog and pony" shows where you get a small sampling of what you can learn or walk away with. Some are simply a big trade-show with vendors hawking the latest and greatest products that are sure to inspire a whole lot of gee-whiz in you and your students...until the next thing comes along. FOSSed, however, is different. Ever since the beginning, 9 years ago, FOSSed has been participant driven. We've set up the entire conference around what YOU wanted to learn more about. We also know that learning from a vendor is one thing, but learning from your colleagues who've "been there and done that" is MUCH more powerful! If success can be measured in longevity, then I can honestly say that FOSSed has truly been successful in meeting the goal of providing quality professional development over the years. FOSSed is now going into our 9th year! Over the years we've had some truly excellent presenters and presentations. This year, I'm sure, will be no exception. We already have some great sessions and instructors lined up and are looking for more (are you interested?) We want you to come and be a part of the FOSSed experience. Many folks come back year after year simply because it is a truly great experience. You not only learn a lot from the sessions, but even more learning takes place after-hours and during the incredible meals. (yes...I said it....the meals are AWESOME at FOSSed) You get a real chance to connect with colleagues and learn so much more than you can in a typical conference environment. We want YOU! Come and be a part of FOSSed...either as a presenter...a participant or both! FOSSed is and always has been participant driven. We want to know what you would like to learn more about. Please go to the FOSSed site (or click here) and go to Call for presentations for FOSSed 2011 (on the left side in the navigation menu) and fill out the simple form where you can tell us more about what you want to learn! Once you get beyond the first page or so there's also an opportunity for you to let us know if you'd like to present. Most of our FOSSed presenters are also FOSSed participants. These folks simply want to share their knowledge and excitement with YOU. If you have an idea...let me know about it...I'd love to have you present to your colleagues. (and did I mention we pay you a bit?) I know the economy isn't what it could be. Times are tough. This is why it's more important than ever that we leverage quality professional development at a great price. The price for FOSSed is ALL INCLUSIVE. Meals, lodging, and the conference are all one low price (that's the same as last year...we held the line and so did Gould Academy). You can stay on-campus...or you can save a little $$$ and stay off-campus. (off-campus is mostly for the local folks with a short commute) It's $495 for on-campus participants and $455 for off-campus. All meals are included. For those of you who are ACTEM members...combine it with your ACTEM professional development benefit and you could be able to come to FOSSed for less than $100! We're also VERY flexible. Some schools need special billing arrangements to accomodate the new fiscal year and so forth...no worries...just contact me and I'll be happy to help you out. ( copperdoggy at gmail.com ) OH! And don't forget...FOSSed is in July...so it is part of the NEW budget/fiscal year...that might help you! Also...don't forget! CEU's! Yes...you can get up to 3 CEU's from the University of Southern Maine (USM official transcript) for attending FOSSed! What a great way to get lots of great recertification credit all at once! Here are some of the sessions I'm working on putting together for this year (the schedule will be finalized as we get a bit closer) Free and Open Source Apps for your iPad The Open Source Mac and iOS All about Android The Open Source Studio (music editing, MIDI, video editing and more!) Open Source and Active Directory (you gotta' see this! It's AWESOME!) openTextbooks Using Google Sites for ePortfolios! Advanced Google Apps for your School or Classroom Productivity 2.0 (using your smartphone, iPad, iPod, laptop, Google Apps, and more to be more productive!) FreeNAS (set up an easy to manage Network Attached Storage Device) Advanced Network Security (Packetfence, PFsense..etc) Open Source Cloning and Imaging (this is always popular and we hope to address mobile devices this year) Open 1to1 2011 image Managing your 1:1 school or classroom (monitoring, filtering, keeping kids on task...etc. with emphasis on free and open source tools) AND MORE! (I'm out of space) ;-) So...whaddya' waiting for? For more information and to register for FOSSed 2011...go to http://www.fossed.com As always...even if you don't have your PO number or you're not sure about the finances...register *NOW!* We'll worry about the PO and stuff later. You can simply email me the PO or PO number when you get one. Please register soon...we can take care of all the other stuff as we go along. *If you have ANY questions*...please email me at copperdoggy at gmail.com I'll be happy to help. David Trask FOSSed 2011 copperdoggy at gmail.com 207.956.0881 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: