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

[Shawn Powers]

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  That rule may be outdated, and disputed slightly, but 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