[K12OSN] Re: Networking a new school for K12LTSP?

[Petre Scheie]

Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> On 1/29/07, Steven Santos <steven at simplycircus.com> wrote:
>> > I would VERY MUCH prefer to use only 1 server for the entire building
>> > -- I am still very much a novice at this and the complexities of
>> > setting up multiple servers or splitting into application & /home with
>> > LAPD sounds rather daunting.
>>
>> With all due respect, in the end I think your really going to regret 
>> this.
>>
>> The SMBLDAP scripts included with K12LTSP make this kind of 3 server 
>> setup
>> fairly easy.  I honestly think that in the short term a 3 server setup
>> (auth/home, TS1 and TS2) would be a lot easier to figure out than 
>> setting up
>> 1 server with nic bonding, and working out the bugs/ghosts that can come
>> with it.
>>
>> Long term, I would say this is an even bigger mistake.  The more
>> workstations that get added to the building (and it WILL grow), the more
>> difficulties you will have dealing with it on one server. On the other 
>> hand,
>> if you start off with a 3 server setup, adding to this becomes really 
>> easy.
>> With a 3 server setup its fairly easy to turn around and add more 
>> terminal
>> servers, fat linux/unix workstations, windows boxes, mac boxes, or 
>> specific
>> services boxes (mail, SQL, WWW, etc) to your network.  Without this 
>> kind of
>> a setup, this is a lot harder to do (and its more than likely that
>> eventually you WILL want to do this)
>>
>> You should also factor cost into this.  I think when you price this 
>> all out,
>> a 3 server setup is likely going to cost you less than your single box
>> setup, especially when you factor the larger switches and your setup time
>> into it.  Long term your administration will be easier with a 3 server 
>> setup
>> as well.  You will be able to add, remove, replace or upgrade servers as
>> needed, and without down time, which you won't get with a single machine
>> setup.
> 
> Ditto. Good advice.
> 
I concur with Steve and Robert.  To try to put everything onto one server means you'd 
have to, among other things, use the 64-bit version of Fedora, and lots of applications 
are not currently compiled for that. If that one server ever went down, *everyone* would 
be affected; with multiple servers, fewer people are disrupted.  Putting everything onto 
one server will most likely cause your project to fail and thereby (incorrectly) 
discredit the use of thin clients.  Don't do it.

Petre