[K12OSN] My server (Was: Multimedia on Thin Clients)

[Shawn Powers]

Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> Do you mind me asking the specs (cpu, ram , drives, mb ) of your
> server that supports 150 clients simultaneously?

No problem -- but it's important to realize that about half of that many 
are being used at one time (I'm guessing), and some are just used to 
start an rdesktop session.  They are all booted up, and I haven't 
noticed any terrible slow downs yet.

I have a Dual Xeon 3.2Ghz machine with 2MB cache.  The drives are SCSI 
U320 in a Raid5 array (hardware RAID), and the /home directory is 
mounted via NFS over the second gigabit ethernet adapter.  It has 6GB of 
RAM, but since I'm running a stock 4.0.1 install, only 4GB is recognized.

A big plus is that the /home directory is mounted from that second 
ethernet port -- so all /home traffic is separate from all LTSP traffic.

I use a very spartan IceWM desktop, and don't load nautilus by default. 
  It is a button on the toolbar, so users can browse their files with 
it, but it doesn't automatically load.  Also, I use XDM rather than KDM 
or GDM -- I'm not sure if that lessens the load any, but it sure leaves 
it simple.  Just a login box with no choices. :)

It's actually worked so well that I haven't felt a need to upgrade.  I 
will upgrade this summer, because I plan to move my user accounts onto 
an OSX server, and authenticate from it.  (This is to accomodate my 
eMacs, not because there is anything wrong with my current NIS 
authentication scheme)

On a comical note, I've had to reinstall the Windows Terminal Server 
twice.  It went live at the same time the LTSP box did. :)

-Shawn

-- 
Shawn Powers
Technology Director
Inland Lakes Schools
PHN: 231-238-6868 x9174
FAX: 509-356-7024
spowers at inlandlakes.org
http://techcorner.inlandlakes.org

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