On 2017-01-20 09:26, Alkis Georgopoulos wrote: > On 20/01/2017 08:54 πμ, Luis Guzmán wrote: >> Seen that you recommend i3 as light clients, which are kind of >> expensive around here, i wonder, why not just make standalone >> installations?, I've come to an answer of to take care of >> administrative >> tasks. >> Then, should LTSP be seen as an administrative software for other >> machines?, such as Puppet or some other administrative platforms. > > > 1) Selecting the client CPU and RAM is exactly the same for > standalone > workstations and LTSP fat clients. > If J1900 is good enough for you, fine. If you want i3, use i3. > There's nothing "light" in this; it's normal workstations in all > cases. > You can also consult your distro recommended requirements. > > 2) Selecting LTSP saves you from buying client hard disks, so it's a > bit > cheaper on hardware. > > 3) In LTSP fat clients, you don't need a beefy and expensive server; > a > normal workstation will do fine. > > 4) The main benefit of LTSP in the fat client use case is the central > administration, yes. You only maintain one installation instead of > many. > For example, to replace one client with standalone workstations you'd > need to install the OS, to install and configure all the > applications, > to join your central user database (e.g. ldap), to deploy /home etc. > With LTSP you just netboot a diskless client, i.e. you're done in > seconds instead of hours/days. Even if you used a perfect (and > complicated) puppet setup, you wouldn't be done in seconds. > > > So yup LTSP is mainly about extremely easy maintenance of a computer > lab.
As Alki says your clients don't need disks, though some schools hold on dearly to the local disk with windows. No problem, either way. There is even a way to add to a local windows boot loader an option to boot from the lan so there is a dual boot for clients, too. Another point about clients: they don't all need to be the same (since some schools already have a mixed bag of the good, bad and ugly.) It's possible to run clients with some fat and others thin. Note that this is only recommended if you must (because you are stuck with some old and some newer clients) since the mixture adds to an administrator's time to keep track of the whole setup. Fat clients (though diskless) run eveything locally just as a standalone pc (and you can opt to run some apps remotely if the result is better.) That is why a server doesn't need more than, say, 50MB of its ram per fat client. Thin clients (also diskless) run almost everything from the server (and again there is an option to run some apps locally) so then the server needs maybe 450MB of ram per thin client. Another important point, especially with thin clients is the much heavier use of the network. A gigabit nic from the server to the switch is a must and the switch needs to have at least that one port a gigabit port. That way (in theory) 10 clients at 100 bit each can access the server (nearly at the same time) through this gigabit link. Don't even think about trying LTSP with clients using wireless links to the router (network speed is much too slow!) Linux is all about choice!! This can be confusing when you first start out. Richard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, SlashDot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.freenode.net
