linux server setup - in the deep end
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From: damo on 17 Apr 2008 02:50 Hi, I've been thrown well and truly in the deep end at my work. I work at an academy with about 300 employees and 500-600 students, and am about to become the IT Manager (and I have no experience of a job of this magnitude). Anyhow here is what I am looking at providing with a linux solution. There will be at most 300 employees logging on to the system and the students wont have access, except where noted below. * Primary Domain Server (SAMBA for Windows XP Pro clients) * NFS (SAMBA again. I estimate serving a max of 5GB, not anticipating huge amounts of transfers) * Mail (IMAP preferred) * Web Proxy (may also include access for cadets perhaps through 50 terminals) * Address Book (LDAP) * Printers Server (SAMBA again I'm guessing) * Web Server (the most significant component is an online database for cadets (already in existence using LAMP, and examination system using Moodle) * Application Server (not sure about this one, looking at it for virus scanner update) So what I am thinking is three servers. One as NFS/PDS One as Mail, Address Book, Printer (and backup of the above) One as Web Proxy, Web Server, firewall How does this look as far as distributing load. I was considering putting PDS and NFS on different boxes as I think these might be the two highest demands.... I wont have access to, or a budget for, high end server boxes. Instead I will be looking at buying more or less standard intel boxes, heaps of RAM and RAID 0+1 setups. What system specs should I realistically be looking at to achieve my goals? How would you implement this if it were you? Many thanks, Damo
From: ERACC on 17 Apr 2008 18:13 On Wed, 16 Apr 2008 23:50:21 -0700 (PDT) damo <votefordamo(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...] > I wont have access to, or a budget for, high end server boxes. > Instead I will be looking at buying more or less standard intel boxes, > heaps of RAM and RAID 0+1 setups. What system specs should I > realistically be looking at to achieve my goals? How would you > implement this if it were you? Sounds like you have a plan to me and I really see no holes in it based on your post here. You would know best which systems would see the highest load at your site. Since you will have to serve Micro$oft based client systems then you will likely have to use SAMBA in all the cases you mentioned. Although it *is* possible to get XP and newer to connect to a CUPS shared printer using IPP without SAMBA. Just tell the 'doze box to connect to http://cups-server/printer replacing "cups-server" and "printer" with the correct values at your site and it should work. However if you want 'doze to automagically find network printers then you will likely need SAMBA printer shares. FWIW, my company custom builds PCs for people in North America needing x86 based Linux and Unix desktops and servers. If you are located in North America maybe we could build yours? We would also provide "free" e-mail assistance for the first 30 days after delivery. If you are not located in NA then perhaps you can find a Linux system builder in your area that could help. In any case it appears to me you are on the correct path to implement an OSS solution at your academy. Gene (e-mail: gene \a\t eracc \d\o\t com) -- Mandriva Linux release 2007.1 (Official) for i586 Got Rute? http://www.anrdoezrs.net/email-2546588-42121?isbn=0130333514 ERA Computers & Consulting - http://www.eracc.com/ Preloaded PCs - eComStation, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenServer & UnixWare
From: Keith Keller on 17 Apr 2008 18:53 On 2008-04-17, damo <votefordamo(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > * Primary Domain Server (SAMBA for Windows XP Pro clients) Just to be clear, this is technically called the PDC, Primary Domain Controller. The Samba docs will use this terminology a lot. > * NFS (SAMBA again. I estimate serving a max of 5GB, not anticipating > huge amounts of transfers) Again, just for clarity, the file sharing protocol for Windows is smb. NFS is completely different, and unless you're serving linux shares, there's no point in going NFS, just use Samba. > * Address Book (LDAP) I believe Samba can use an LDAP backend for authentication, so you might take a look at that. > How does this look as far as distributing load. I was considering > putting PDS and NFS on different boxes as I think these might be the > two highest demands.... I think the standard recommendation is to put the PDC on its own box. This machine could be fairly simple, just a RAID1 on an out-of-the-box x86 clone. That complicates matters slightly, as now you have two Samba server instances, one on the PDC, another on the fileserver. > I wont have access to, or a budget for, high end server boxes. > Instead I will be looking at buying more or less standard intel boxes, > heaps of RAM and RAID 0+1 setups. I don't know how much data you plan to serve, but for your Samba fileserver you may consider more disks in a RAID5 or RAID6. Even a 1U or 2U box with four or eight drive bays will serve a ton of disk. Don't skimp here, get a real hardware RAID card and hot-swappable drive bays, so that you can change a failed disk without downing the fileserver. --keith -- kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us (try just my userid to email me) AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt see X- headers for PGP signature information
From: Michael Heiming on 18 Apr 2008 03:17
In comp.os.linux.setup Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us>: > On 2008-04-17, damo <votefordamo(a)gmail.com> wrote: [..] >> I wont have access to, or a budget for, high end server boxes. >> Instead I will be looking at buying more or less standard intel boxes, >> heaps of RAM and RAID 0+1 setups. > I don't know how much data you plan to serve, but for your Samba > fileserver you may consider more disks in a RAID5 or RAID6. Even a 1U > or 2U box with four or eight drive bays will serve a ton of disk. Don't > skimp here, get a real hardware RAID card and hot-swappable drive bays, > so that you can change a failed disk without downing the fileserver. Seconded! I'd also look into http://www.ltsp.org/ a halfway reasonable server could easily serve +300 students with thin clients and save tons of money + time for administrative purposes. You can run an extra citrix server for some software needing M$, though most things can be done with Linux apps. You might want to run the citrix client on the thin clients to save the server some horse power and speed things up. -- Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94) mail: echo zvpunry(a)urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/' #bofh excuse 112: The monitor is plugged into the serial port |