[K12OSN] Servers, K12LTSP, and workstation numbers, etc.

[Doug Simpson]

25 clients per server. . . we'd need about 40 servers. . .They'd never go 
for that. . . I was hoping to be able to serve hundreds per server. . .

Not a good deal, but. . .

Doug Simpson
Technology Specialist
DeQueen Public Schools
DeQueen, AR 71832
simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
Tux for President!

On Mon, 24 Jul 2006, James P. Kinney III wrote:

> It really boils down to networking at the Enterprise model level. Tests
> have show that a 1Gb data line can support 25 clients.
> 
> RAM is still king as each client will need 50-75 MB of RAM.
> 
> We had about 56 clients hanging from a dual Opteron (single core) server
> w/4GB RAM and dual, bonded Gb NICs. The load level was getting heavy but
> OK until firefox got loaded. At that point, swap got hit and the box
> thrashed itself into oblivion. A hard reboot later (and turning OFF
> swap) and it _could_ run 56 clients but it was dragging.
> 
> So for the "Bottom dollar" person: a single chip, dual core w/ 2GB RAM
> and 2 NICs (one Gb for clients, the other 100Mb for Internet) and a
> 120GB hard drive will serve 25+ clients very well. This a good model for
> an "app server".
> 
> On Mon, 2006-07-24 at 10:15 -0500, Doug Simpson wrote:
> > Hello.
> > 
> > I finally have got my Superintendent excited about being able to use older 
> > hardware to save monty and use K12LTSP for thos older computers to make 
> > them usable again in Internet/Research/Writing labs in our schools.
> > 
> > I have several servers that have K12LTSP installed and ready to go, 
> > thinking I could run many workstations from them.
> > 
> > But when I read articles that say a district has 32 servers to deploy 
> > K12LTSP, I am thninking I am missing something because where is the cost 
> > savings in that, forst of all, and that means server updates and 
> > everything will have to be done on all those servers.
> > 
> > Our Supt. is a "Bottom Dollar" kind of guy and he doesn't look at TCO so 
> > much as what it will cost to "get it in the door".
> > 
> > Say I have a server with 12GB RAM, Almost a terabyte (sp?) of SCSI hard 
> > drive in Raid5 and Gigabit NICs.  Realistically, how many workstations can 
> > I hang off there using Gnome, Mozilla, OOo, and several other apps on 
> > intermittent basis and see usable performance?
> > 
> > Also, I have one server, running FC1 with K12LTSP and it serves DHCP IP 
> > addresses, but I want another server to handle the terminals.
> > 
> > I added the next-server line to dhcpd.conf, but it still looks to the FC1 
> > server to boot from. The other (preferred server) is FC3, K12LTSP and I 
> > think it is set up correctly.
> > 
> > What can I look for to make the workstations boot and run from the FC3 
> > server with DHCP being handled by the FC1 server?
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Doug Simpson
> > Technology Specialist
> > DeQueen Public Schools
> > DeQueen, AR 71832
> > simpsond at leopards.k12.ar.us
> > Tux for President!
> > 
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> -- 
> James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
> CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
> Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
> 770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
> http://www.localnetsolutions.com
> 
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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>