[K12OSN] Need advice on network setup for school

[Burke Almquist]

On Jul 23, 2006, at 8:53 PM, kyle at caliberis.com wrote:

>
> 6) Virtualization - The move of clients to Linux could go much  
> quicker if
> an environment was available in which to run those Windows  
> applications
> for which no alternatives have been found if they could be run in a
> virtual machine. I believe that I can achieve this using the free  
> VMWare
> server as a host for Windows 98 and that the licensing of the Windows
> operating system allows for the machine code to execute on a single
> machine with no restrictions of the number of instances of code  
> that can
> run on the single machine.
>
>

> 3) Three identically configured Compaq 6400R servers. These servers  
> have
> 4GB RAM, three 18GB drives, and 4 500Mhz PIII Xeon processors.
>
>
> 6) No money (although when all other options have been exhausted  
> some can
> be located at times)


What you probably want is to make one server the central file store  
and authentication. Put all the SCSI disks in there (except on for  
each of the other two servers) and make it a RAID 5. Split up the  
other two servers so they issue nonoverlapping addresses but serve  
the same pool of clients. Primitive load balancing essentially.

My only concern is if those machines have enough horsepower to run  
VMware. If you can get the money, you might make that P4 into a  
windows server and run applications though terminal services. WINE  
would be the best option though if you can get your apps working with  
that. Codeweavers makes a nice commercial version with an easy  
install and support. It's affordably priced too so thats worth a look  
if you want to go the that route.