[K12OSN] newbie: nfs /home and load balancing issues

[Barry Cisna]

mikko,

  If you can figure out how to setup your /home folders via NFS ( to your
"best" server in your bunch), you are home free. For load balancing your
servers,you can simply enable dhcp on all servers. I know it sounds not
logical,but this is how Ive run our K12LTSP servers, on two school
subnets for 5 years. I was going to try and setup the server cluster
thing in Webmin but this has worked fine for us. If you power on 20
computers,,for example at the same time,,you will simply get a login
screen to the " least busiest server", at the time. If you wanted to get
real "down to the brass tacks",, you can setup each server to serve dhcp
to certain clients( by mac address) and just divide  clients by number
of servers, This would be a lot of extra  entering,and you really
wouldnt gain anything IMHO.
No need to make things more complex than they need to be:). You can either
setup, your users on an " authentication server",and point each server to
this server,or its easy as well to use Webmin to add all users,to one
server ,then export them to all other servers on your lan.If you have
older hardware this would be a good setup. If one servers dies,,,you keep
on rolling without having to add/setup a new authentication server:)
Either way will work,without incident.

Good Luck,

Barry Cisna