[K12OSN] PD for staff (really OO)

[Les Mikesell]

On Sat, 2004-04-17 at 13:33, Andrew Fournier wrote:
> Yeah, I thought about that after my post-- that past a point I might be
> running too much hardware just to share out an office suite. I'll
> experiment on a smaller scale and see how it works out. My interest in
> doing the system with central app and home servers is that I think we
> might end up seeing more or less generic dell classroom servers (cheap
> hard drives) and I think it might actually easier to pitch a few big bad
> app servers than a bunch of beefy classroom servers. We have been using
> Novell, you see....

I think the total amount of RAM involved is going to determine
most of the price and performance, regardless of how you slice
and dice, and a flock of so-so boxes will probably come out
cheaper than a few high end monsters.  Plus, it is always handy
to have a spare or two and that's easier with cheaper boxes.

> BTW is there ANYTHING novell provides that I can't do with linux? I
> can't think of anything....

I don't think anything is really missing with Linux, but you'll
have to work a lot harder to get a central LDAP authentication
server set up.  It would be nice if someone could package that
with the current schemas for PosixAccount/SambaAccount and
whatever it takes to direct email delivery already set up with
a GUI or web based user management tool.  I think the parts
are all available but so far I haven't seen anything that works
out of the box.

---
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com




>  Sat, 2004-04-17 at 09:28, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-04-16 at 23:25, Andrew Fournier wrote:
> > > This would seem to imply that large central ( or clustered?) application
> > > and home servers connected to from lab and classroom level ltsp servers
> > > would be what is wanted for a building wide implementation, right? This
> > > kinda brings up kimberlite & LVM for the home server.....
> > 
> > Having a central authentication server and home directories makes
> > sense, but whether you should offload apps from the local
> > desktop servers or not is a trade-off that is going to depend
> > on local circumstances.  You will gain some efficiency by
> > running more copies of the same app on the same machine where
> > linux will share the memory, and perhaps some stability because
> > upgrades may be done separately on these machines.  However
> > you now have to maintain custom menus and machines that
> > are not all identical clones. You also may need a more expensive
> > network backbone to match the performance of a classroom
> > server with a gigabit uplink to a classroom switch behind the
> > local server.  A compromise might be to start with a 'staff'
> > application server where you maintain programs not needed
> > in every classroom but run all the student desktops and apps
> > from identical/interchangeable local servers.
> > 
> > ---
> >   Les Mikesell
> >    les at futuresource.com
> > 
> > 
> > 
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