Hello Stephen & list, resume in advance: - BACKUP insufficient. Buy a tape streamer. - Hard drive in linux server: more? - test client NICs in advance - client terminals ready to purchase?
Wednesday, November 20, 2002, 9:34:00 AM, you wrote: > [...] Hoping that some folks > on the list can inject some input and comment. > COMPARISON > 1) Server Obviously, your server is quite the same setup for both environments. Be a nice guy and give the linux server some more harddrive? At least as an option, as all your homedirs will be there. Do yourself (or the "engineer") a favour and implant some nice backup technique. CD-RW isn't really your choice, is it? There should be some quite wellpriced tape systems, and you would need them for win2k too. TALKING FROM EXPERIENCE: MAKE A BACKUP! A Linux Server in my former school lost its / drive (/home on a different disk) when the disk gave up (hardware problem, ext3 wouldn't have helped). > Memory (RAM) DDR266, 1GB Should be fine for 10 Terminals, but you know "more tastes better". > HDD 40 GB Perhaps a second one (one small 18G for system, one 36G for data, if you want SCSI). Separation of data (/home) from system (/ partition) has proven sensible. > Monitor 15' If you need it permanently, which I don't think. If its enough from time to time to borrow a screen, no need to purchase this. > Licence fee Windows 2000, Advanced Server > MS Office 2000 To be honest, there is a cheaper solution than that: In your linux setup, you give up MSOffice anyhow, so you could use OpenOffice(Windows) or so. > Total Too much, of course :-) > 2) Conventional workstation > Spec Price > Pentium IV 1 Ghz > Motherboard with built-in Video card and NIC > Memory (RAM) DDR266, 128 MB I wouldn't want that for Win2k. Subjective opinion: Great improvement with 256 MB. And even SD-Ram (which is cheaper by 40% at my local grocery right today) > HDD 30 GB If data stored on the workstations, ok. Else 20G would be sufficient. > CDRom 52X Why not DVD, when setting up new systems? > Monitor 15' TFT? Or just take 17" CRT. My dealer has them cheaper then 17" anyway. > 4) Maintenance cost > a) Server one Engineer/month > b) Workstations one Technician/month To be discussed. What would the server be for? Diskspace serving? User administration? Internet routing? THe more on the server, the less on the clients, the fewer the client administration. > DISKLESS NETWORKING > Licence fee Linux Nil > OpenOffice Nil > Gimp Nil > Iptables Nil > KOnCD Nil > Total You know there is Linux-Software that's not free? Be sure to check out that usage in a non-private environment (it's a school, not a company, but read the small-print. I don't know e.g. for openoffice...) is free!? > 1) (server) > FDD 3.5' Do you need that in a Linux environment? It's just 10$ or so, but well... > 2) Diskless workstation > Spec Price > Pentium P II Cel 600 Hz > Motherboard with built-in Video card that hopefully is supported > Memory (RAM) SD133, 64 MB > HDD not required Nil > Ethernet card (NIC) with boot ROM yep. Either get one to flash yourself (I like etherboot) or one fully PXE-compatible (if there is anything than that). Be sure to have that model of NIC tested beforehand and save yourself some gray hairs. > Monitor 15' See above. > 3) Installation cost > a) Server 1 unit > b) Workstations 10 units b) = NIL if you don't count the EPROM to be inserted and the BIOS to be setup so that it doesn't activate the onboard IDE > 4) Maintenance cost > a) Server one Engineer/month > b) Workstations to be covered by the Engineer You could give in that there is some more work on the server than in a pure diskspace/internetrouting environment as your win2k setup looks like for me. Perhaps some more is needed. Don't ignore documentation. Write down everything well, then later the administration is less work. Just imagine your colleague fiddling around your setup not finding out where the gdm configuration file was located that you hacked to show the school logo on top of the screen. > 5) Running cost > Electricity per month > (heat generated will reduce resulting in less air > conditioning consumpted) And less noise from the client machines. Think about some ready terminals. I heard www.disklessworkstations.com had some on stock... At least you cannot get better ltsp support as on those, can you? Notice about that linux clients: In our setup in a upper school, Kardinal-Frings-Gymnasium Bonn, we have 15 clients 486-100, 24MB RAM, 10MBit BNC and it is not that fast, but two weeks ago I wired an 800MHz/64MB via a 100MBit switch (btw, what about cabling? 100MBit, I think, and let it be done CAT7 at a low plus price) - it was a very nice speed. Bootup in less than 30 seconds, from pressing the power switch, and that with etherboot from harddisk even, as I had no rom there. For the server, that should suffice for 10 clients without any problem. Have a lot of fun.... Best regards, Anselm Martin Hoffmeister Stockholm Projekt Computer-Service <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by: Battle your brains against the best in the Thawte Crypto Challenge. Be the first to crack the code - register now: http://www.gothawte.com/rd521.html _____________________________________________________________________ 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.openprojects.net
