Minimum Server Specs (was Re: [K12OSN] A couple of questions)

[jam at mcquil.com]

Shawn,

Great stuff.  I'll add my $0.02:

1)  Ram is more important than CPU speed.

    I've always found that there is a sweet spot on the cpu pricing.
    If 3.2Ghz is the current top of the line, then the 2.8ghz cpus are
    probably the best value for the money.
    So, put as much ram in as possible, and back down on the speed of
    the cpus just a bit.

    You probably won't notice the difference between a 2.8Ghz cpu and a 
    3.2Ghz cpu.  But, I think you'd definately see the difference 
    between 2gb of ram and 4gb of ram.

2)  For speed of the drives, it really depends on the applications.
    In schools, like most of the people on this list, I think the
    recommendation for SCSI drives is right on target.  For businesses,
    it really depends on the apps, because, in my customers, most of
    the users are just using xterm to get to another application server,
    and they aren't storing any data in their home directory.  In this
    case, you can put many many clients on a server with IDE drives.

    Raid is always a must.  The software raid in linux works 
    surprisingly well, and can be used on both SCSI and IDE drives, if
    you can't afford a raid controller.

Hope that helps,

Jim McQuillan.



On Sun, 1 Aug 2004, Shawn Powers wrote:

> I'm home sick today, missed church and everything, so I'll happily 
> elaborate on one of the most-asked-hardest-to-answer questions.
> 
> The problem is that it depends SO MUCH on what the configuration and use 
> of the clients are.  Also, is the /home directory on the server, or 
> mounted from another file server.  Also, is everyone on the computers 
> doing the same thing (ie, mozilla running 30 times is easier than 15 
> different applications running)
> 
> I think the RAM rule is to have 50 or 100 MB per client, and 512 for the 
> server itself.  That rule may be outdated, and disputed slightly, but 
> it's a pretty good rule to go by.
> 
> The drive space rule is that if you have more than 8 clients or so, you 
> NEED to have a SCSI based /home directory -- preferably in a RAID array. 
> 
> The CPU rule is that you get as much as you can afford. :)  I don't have 
> any real-world track record to go from here.  My first large scale 
> deployment will come online in about a month.  I bought (3) Dual Xeon 
> 3.2Ghz servers, and I'm running JUST openoffice on one of them, and JUST 
> mozilla on one of them.  That's not the "normal" setup -- but I hope it 
> will let me grow.
> 
> My suggestions, if you're talking about 30 clients -- get 2-3 GB of RAM, 
> Gig ethernet, SCSI based /home directory (15,000RPM drives if possible), 
> and a dual xeon CPU if you can afford it.  That might be overkill, I 
> really don't know.  I always like to err on the side of safety. :)  
> You'll also need a switch with a gig uplink port for the server.  You 
> really don't want to cut corners there, you need a switch, and it has to 
> hook to the server via gigabit.
> 
> I know that a PIII 1Ghz with 512MB RAM will happily support 4 clients 
> over 100mbit with an IDE drive.  That's about the biggest deployment 
> I've had to date. :)   You can be sure I'll report after the school year 
> starts as to how my servers are handling it.
> 
> Maybe this thread could turn into a "you show me yours I'll show you 
> mine" thread, so we can all see what size servers are handling what 
> loads how well.  I know there is a spot on the k12ltsp site for case 
> studies, but I've never had a chance to post my setups.
> 
> Anybody else want to describe their setups?
> 
> -Shawn
> 
> 
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