[K12OSN] School Server

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

Timothy Legge wrote:
> Hi
>
> I am pricing some servers and it is amazing the hardware you can get
> now.  I look after a Boy's and Girls club that might be similar to
> some schools.  We have staff and kids; up to now we have separated the
> kids from the staff by using separate servers with each having a
> separate network using the same internet connection.
>
> However, since I am pricing a replacement server for the kids I
> wondered whether the separation might not be necessary.  I could get
> one server to do the 30 or so clients or just continue to break it up
> with 10+ staff clients and 20+ kids clients.
>
> The security side of me says to keep the kids as far from the staff
> server as possible but on the other hand, for the same money, I could
> go with two server and have fail over/load balancing.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Tim
>   

I'm with you on the security concern.  One for the kids, one for the 
adults.  That's especially so, given that the adults are presumably 
conducting B & G Club business on the staff server.  At a minimum, 
they're probably doing some online banking or buying stuff online.

Remember that the biggest considerations for LTSP servers are as follows:

1.)  sufficient DRAM,
2.)  sufficient network bandwidth, and
3.)  plenty of CPU.  Multiple cores are a major plus here.

You don't need a fancy "server grade" box for this.  Both Intel and AMD 
make monster quad-core chips now, with Intel somewhat in the speed 
lead.  DRAM is cheap, and copper Gig-E is cheap.  Just build a couple of 
boxes w/ 4GB DRAM each, thus realizing yet further savings *and* knowing 
that you picked good hardware.

--TP