On Wed, 2003-04-09 at 08:49, VINOD wrote:
> Hi ,
> What is the maximum no of clients i can have throgh LTSP ?
> thanks,
Vinod,
there is no easy answer to your question; it depends on too many
factors. There are workarounds for just about any limit; with enough
servers, enough of your time, and enough money to make network upgrades,
there's no limit. Your network, your servers, and your ability to think
of ways around problems are the main limiting factors.
Your server's memory, disk speed, and CPU will limit the number of
clients it can support. Server memory is probably the biggest limiter.
It's hard to come up with a simple formula to calculate how many users a
server can support; it depends on which Window Manager you use and which
programs your users run. You can estimate this by running "cat
/proc/meminfo" on the server with one, two, and three users signed in
AND WORKING (this is important). This will tell you how much memory
each user needs. Remember that many programs load a single copy of
their code to share between users, but that some (Mozilla is the most
notorious example) do not; if this is important to you, you will need to
test individual apps.
Your network speed is another limiting factor. If you are running a
10-baseT network with hubs, response time will drop off quickly as you
add clients. The drop-off is not linear; you may find that 7 clients
work perfectly, but 8 makes the setup unusable (I made those numbers up;
don't count on them). You can fix this by using switches or upgrading
your network to 100-baseT.
Since you can have multiple servers on a single network, you can get
around all of these limits. When performance begins to drop, set up
another server and move users or applications.
-You can connect your servers together on a Gigabit network.
-You can use NAS or SANs for home directories.
-You can use Mosix clusters for servers to increase processing speed.
-You can use single-purpose servers (eg, run OpenOffice on one machine,
while running everything else on another).
-You can assign users to specific LTSP servers based on function
(secretaries, deparment, etc) or their physical locations.
-You can use XDMCP indirect queries with Xwilling scripts for crude
load-balancing.
In short, if you have enough server memory and network bandwidth, you
can have as many clients as you want.
-David
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