[K12OSN] rolling your own

Eric Harrison eharrison at mail.mesd.k12.or.us
Fri Oct 20 14:46:55 UTC 2006


Eric Brown wrote:
> My existing k12ltsp server isn't quite doing the job it used to.  It's
> a quad P3 550 MHz, with 3gb ram purchased off ebay 2 years ago.  When
> 20 kids open firefox and OO, things slow down quite a bit, and firefox
> may hang on several kids.  I started searching for a new server on
> E-Bay, where I found a quad 2ghz machine with 8gb ram for $5k.  My
> principal was reluctant to spend that much money on something used
> with no warranty.  He said he'd prefer to have me purchase parts and
> use the assembly of the server as a teaching opportunity (something
> I've done with workstations in the past).
> 
> My question for the group is, has anyone done this and encountered
> problems with some aspect of the machine in an LTSP environment?
> 
> I'm looking at a Tyan board that will take 4 Opteron dual-core
> processors, probably 8 gb RAM, 2 gb nics onboard.  I'm not too worried
> about disk space.  I've only got 4 9gb drives in a raid5 right now,
> and only 44% is in use for about 60 students.  I'm planning on
> something like 4 74gb 10,000 rpm drives with 8mb cache.  Since the
> board is an extended atx, nearly any case that will take it is usually
> a server case with room for all the drives.
> 
> Preliminary costs look to be $5k-$6k, which is the ball park I've been
> given.
> 
> Anything I'm missing?  Is this a bad thing to do?  Shouldn't this run
> 20-25 clients very well for some time?  Is it too much (I'm often
> accused of over-engineering anything I build)?  Any comments welcome.
> 
> Thanks,
> Eric Brown
> 


The last couple times I've looked, the "big guys" often matched or beat
what I could build myself.

I just checked Dell and a PowerEdge 2950 with two dual core Xeon 5130's,
8G of ram, 4x73G 10k SAS drives, and dual power supplies is $5,122
(NOTE: select "Small Business", that will get you better prices than
"Education")

Gateway usually has unbeatable prices on servers, but they are currently
using the older, slower, power-hungry xeons. You really want a shiny new
Opteron or 5100-series Xeon.

-Eric

-Eric




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