[K12OSN] K12LTSP Server Specs

[James P. Kinney III]

The other side of this is get 3 cheap $500 machines with dual-core
Athlon FX chips and plop a total of 4 GB RAM in each box. Add a 1G Nic
to each and you have a baby cluster that won't kill off but 10 machines
when it croaks for about $1700. Save yourself the 64-bit hassle and run
32-bit on this. With the cheap box, it'll be sharing out system RAM for
video RAM anyway. Put the server in front of the teachers. Use ldap
authentication upstream and NFS mount /home dirs from a file server. 

On Thu, 2008-04-03 at 03:30 -0400, "Terrell Prudé Jr." wrote:
> That's been discussed many times on this list, and plenty of folks
> have their own opinions.  Here's mine, which assumes your 30 users
> will be using a "fat / full-featured" desktop like GNOME or KDE.
> 
> - CPU:  At least two 64-bit cores, 2GHz each.  If you can afford a
> quad-core CPU, then do so.  Either Intel or AMD is fine.
> 
> - DRAM:  Minimum 4GB, preferably 8GB.  DRAM is your best friend when
> it comes to LTSP.
> 
> - NIC #1:  Gig-E on at least the thin client side.  If your 30 users
> are all running TuxType or TuxMath simultaneously, make it two Gig-E
> NICs ganged together in a MultiLink config.  Get decent managed
> switches that support this if you don't already have them.  If DRAM is
> your best friend, then network speed comes immediately after.
> 
> - NIC #2:  Since you're doing NFS mounts, then I'd go Gig-E on the
> "school LAN" side as well.  Otherwise, 100Mbps is usually fine.
> 
> - Video:  Can be ye olde, slow cheap-o.  That said, your clients
> should have modern video (Intel is good).
> 
> - Go with hardware RAID 1.  SCSI RAID is expensive, but "the bomb" if
> you can afford it.  If not, then get a SATA RAID card, not that fake-y
> "RAID" junk built into many motherboards (it's software based).  I use
> hardware SATA RAID myself.
> 
> --TP
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> 
> 
> Tim Nelson wrote: 
> > Hello! We're currently working with a school that will be implementing a new K12LTSP server. The server will be handling roughly 30 clients. The current LTSP servers they have are all Supermicro units with Xeon CPUs. Storage capacity is not incredibly important as all user data is stored on a separate fileserver and mounted via NFS. What would you recommend for specs of the hardware? It should be usable now and be scalable to support future K12LTSP setups. I appreciate any insight you can give. Thank you!
> > 
> > Tim Nelson
> > Systems/Network Support
> > Rockbochs Inc.
> > 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC        
770-493-8244                    
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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