[K12OSN] Need Help

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

Don Gould wrote:
> To anyone listening,
>
> I am the Technology guy at a small christian school and I have been
> to to seminars.  I am ready to make the leap to K12osn.
> What I have :
>
> 30 computers in the lab
> 24 stand alone
> 6 networked internet machines
> all are windows 98, 2000 or ME
> 9 printers 4 of which work
>
> I need to get a server or build one.  But I need to know what I need
> in the server.  I nned to keep the win os for stand alone use.  But I
> will netwok all the machines for K12.  Will I be able to print my
> windows documents thru the server and do I also need win server
> software as well as K12? I will use the sever for the internet.  I
> plan to get one or two netwok printer to serve all my printing needs
> if that will work.  Feel free to answer all the question I dont even
> know I need to ask to get this started.  Thanks in advance for your
> help.
>
> In desperate straights
>
> Don Gould
> Hollandale Christian School
>   

Others have commented on the clients, so I figured I'd chime in on the
server.

For 30 clients, I'd recommend at least a dual-processor box.  If you can
get, say, a couple of dual-core AMD Opterons or dual-core Intel Xeons
(the "Core 2 Duo" variety), then do so.  For DRAM, I'd suggest--at a
minimum--4GB, and if you can afford more, then go for it.  Your server
should have Gigabit Ethernet on the interface that faces the clients. 
It's nice to have Gig-E on both sides, but the client-facing one is most
important.

As for hard disk storage, RAID 5 is my preference.  If you can afford
SCSI RAID 5, then that's the best, but SCSI RAID is not cheap.  If
money's an issue, then I have built a SATA RAID 5 that performs quite
nicely indeed.  I used five 200GB disks and an LSI MegaRAID 150-6
controller for mine.

So, in a nutshell, here are my recommended server specs:

Processor:  two dual-core CPU's, 1.8GHz if Opterons, 1.6GHz if Core 2 Duo's
Memory:  4GB minimum (more is better)
Network:  Gig-E for eth0, 100Mb or more for eth1
Storage:  Hardware-based RAID 5, preferably SCSI, but SATA is acceptable
Video:  Doesn't matter; this can be junk
Sound:  Doesn't matter; this can be junk

You might give Penguin Computing a call and tell 'em what you want to
do.  They've been building GNU/Linux server boxes for years now and are
quite good at it.

--TP