[K12OSN] Just about ready to make a purchase

[Cody Grosskopf]

I run a lab with 34 clients I have a dell poweredge with two dual core
xeon 5148 processors, 4 gigs of DDR2 memory and 3-146 gig SAS drives
(was not my choice on the hard drives), the students run simple
applications from GNOME (Firefox, openoffice, etc.) they also use Ericom
software to use a couple windows applications (reading counts, and type
to learn). I also use LTSP 4.2 on SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, it
is sufficient but I think more CPU is better! When the students login
the cpu's get hit pretty hard. Other than that things are going fairly
well. 

Hope this helps in your decision.



>>> "Robert Arkiletian" <robark at gmail.com> 05/09/07 8:56 PM >>>
Hi again Jim,

I hope people aren't getting tired of this thread.

I think if you want to go with just a 2x dual core system (4 cores)
the Dell 2900 with Xeon 5100 cpus and 667RAM and 1333FSB should be a
very good solution. I didn't like the old Netburst Dell 6800 server
and I am a little scared of the quad core Xeon 5300 cpu cause it's so
new.

The 6950 Opteron looks nice but it will probably be louder. Rack
mounts are usually louder than towers. Plus as you said it does not
have as much storage options. I think it takes a max of 5 drives.

Personally, I don't think you really need 8 cores for 90 clients. 4
cores should be enough. So the 2900 with only dual cores should
probably be enough. But if you really want more power remember what
Les was saying about not putting everything into one box, he has lots
of experience. If you had 2 2900's with 8GB ram each, for about 60
clients each, it would offer more room to grow in the future. That's
probably what I would do. Get 2 2900's export /home from one of them
and use LDAP for auth. It would mean less bandwidth issues and your
not putting all your eggs in one basket. Plus more room to grow in the
future as you could just add another 2900 for another 60 clients. More
choices to consider....

Hope my posts help you make a better choice. I know how hard it can be
to make a good decision.

On 5/9/07, Jim Kronebusch <jim at winonacotter.org> wrote:
> > Please take my advice with caution Jim as I have no personal
> > experience with any of this Dell hardware. I am just sharing my
> > opinion. If you decide on the 2900 please make sure it will work
with
> > Linux. Check the MB chipset, NICs, HD controllers etc. Also I'm not
> > even sure if Linux kernel will work with quad core cpu's yet.
> > Please do your homework. Don't rely on my word.
>
> I take all advice with caution :-)  The more I read, the more I am
inclined to go with
> an Opteron server.  Dell makes a 6950 with quad dual core opterons,
but it is in a 4U
> case so there is not as many options for internal drives.  However I
do have an external
> PowerVault 220S that can handle 14 SCSI drives and is already
populated with four 300GB
> drives.  I could run the OS on some smaller internal drives and run
/home on the
> powervault or run them all in the powervault.  I will look more into
this tonight.  I
> want to purchase everything within the next week or two, but I think
the topics posted
> here merit a little more research.
>
> Dell offers all of these servers with RedHat Linux AS.  So I would
assume that the
> 64-bit K12LTSP would run fine on them.  I will put a call into Dell to
verify.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by the Cotter Technology
> Department, and is believed to be clean.
>
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>


-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/

_______________________________________________
K12OSN mailing list
K12OSN at redhat.com
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>