[K12OSN] New Building's LTSP Server

[Jeff Siddall]

On 04/20/2011 01:18 PM, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> if you can afford it I recommend server grade hardware (not desktop
> hardware). I personally have had good luck with affordable whitebox
> Supermicro stuff. The built in server grade intel nics are far better
> than desktop nics. Also use server grade sata drives like the  WD RE4.
> The ram is also ecc reg. You can buy a pretty nice dual socket system
> for 3-4K.

I agree about the NICs being better and the ECC RAM also being a nice
thing, but honestly I have not had any serious issues with the "desktop"
grade servers I have built in the past decade or so.  Avoid cheap power
supplies and fans and you will probably be fine.

Using desktop grade hardware has a side benefit that it can save enough
money to allow the purchase of a hardware "spare" that is ready to go in
case of failure of a production server.

I am currently working on some scripts that will sync up the disks on
the spare server with the production servers every night so the spare
server is almost "warm".  My goal is to have it check the network on
power-on and automatically insert itself in place of a failed production
server if it detects one is down.  It is not progressing very fast but
if I ever get it working I'll post the scripts in case others want to
use it.

About hard drives I always used enterprise grade SATA drives assuming
they were better quality.  However, after a batch of problems with WD
RE2s and an issue with a Seagate ES.2 I am not so sure.  The TLER stuff
is probably still useful but there is a significant price gap from the
desktop versions.  For non-critical/non-RAID stuff (ex: backups) I just
use desktop grade drives now though all my RAID arrays still use
enterprise disks.

Jeff