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

[Petre Scheie]

Huck-
Have you looked at putting multiple gig-e cards in the server?  You may need to break 
things into multiple subnets for it to work (or perhaps not).  There was some discussion 
on the list a couple years ago about using multiple NICs in the server, but I don't 
recall what the consensus was.

Petre

Huck wrote:
> Doug,
> 
> your bottleneck on that is going to happen at the network level more 
> likely...I have dual Xeon 3.0ghz with 4 gig of ram...
> with 35 terminals all going at the same time...it gets slow on a gig-e 
> backbone...(with less than 40% CPU usage and has never touched swap file 
>  for memory as far as I can tell when monitoring with 'top')
> 
> Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but the math seems correct..
> 
> 35*75(approximately) == around to 2 gigs of used bandwidth.
> perhaps there is some method of load balancing I can use that I haven't 
> tried yet...(an application server, 2 k12ltsp servers...)
> 
> I am sure 'scalability' is a larger issue with public schools and 
> districts...luckily we're a small 1 site school with only about 230 
> students and the LTSP network is merely to augment the Mac and PC labs.
> 
> --Huck
> 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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> 
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