[K12OSN] Adding another server as backup.

[Martin Woolley]

On Wednesday 11 May 2005 01:57, AIMSSDA wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have an existing LTSP server, and this coming school year i will buy
> another server that will serve as a backup. I don't want my students to
> nag me when no computer class.
>
> Now, my question is, how can i make a setup that when the first LTSP
> server bugs down, the clients can still boot using the other LTSP
> server. Is that possible?

We have 6 LTSP servers for our 90 clients.  Clients connect to a random server 
and the load is spread roughly evenly.  I say "roughly" because one box is 
more greedy than the others and takes more logins; this may be related to the 
processing power of said box.  User authenication is a mix of NIS and Samba; 
old student accounts are authenicated against an NT4 box and newer ones 
against one of the Linux servers using YP.  When the last of the older 
students leaves, we can drop the NT4 box (a day that I am very much looking 
forward to).  

As far as the load balancing goes, we did nothing special.  Each LTSP server 
was setup the same.  Each is a DHCP server and each serves addresses in the 
same network range.  The client PXE boots, grabs an i/p address from which 
ever server responds first and is loaded with a kernel. The second DHCP 
request (for the NFS) may be served by a different server to that which 
supplied the kernel.  

It just works and we've been running this setup for 2 1/2 years now.  We are 
currently adding another class room of 30 machines and two more servers and 
this will be the same as the existing setup.
-- 
Regards
Martin Woolley
ICT Support
Handsworth Grammar School
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna


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