On Sun, 2004-03-07 at 15:24, Brian Johnson wrote:
> Are there any docs about splitting ltsp load betwen servers?
>
> I would like to stick with off-the-shelf intel or amd based machines for the
> servers but my concern is keeping the installed programs and user accounts in
> sync between multiple servers
>
> I was wondering about using some mid-range machines as workstations AND ltsp
> servers but would need to spread the load between them based on usage (some
> kind of dynamic load balancing would be great but may not be worth the hassle
> of setting up)
You may here something else from other on the list, but to me, dynamic
load balancing doesn't work with LTSP; the load any one user puts on the
server is just too variable from moment to moment.
If one server won't handle the load, there are two general approaches:
1. Segregate your users (eg, by department or job function)
2. Segregate your apps
Segregating users by department, floor, building, et cetera is simple to
understand, so I won't go into it for now.
Segregating apps isn't much different. You set up a single LTSP server,
and another server for OpenOffice (for example). When a user clicks on
the OpenOffice icon, the window manager runs "ssh oooserver ooffice"
instead of just "ooffice".
The advantage of this is that a single app has a simpler "profile,"
making static load balancing somewhat practical. For example, two
instances of OpenOffice do not use two times as much memory, because
most of the app is in shared libraries.
If you segregate by app, you have to provide transparent access to
files. In other words, if Open Office and your email program are on
different hosts, you need to make it easy to attach an Open Office doc
to an email. NFS is one way to do this, perhaps combined with an
automounter. A clustered (distributed) filesystem is another, although
I've never tried this.
Here's a simple network:
-------LTSP server--------(all clients
/
homeserver
\
-------OOo server
Only your LTSP server is exposed to your clients; both the LTSP server
and the OOo server use NFS to mount /home. The LTSP server uses ssh to
start sessions on the OOo server. You can add more servers and move
other apps to them as your workload increases.
BTW, I'm not picking on Open Office; I mention it because it provided a
convenient example. Look at the apps you run, and try moving them to
another server until you're satisfied.
hth,
David
--
David Johnston <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Little Bald Consulting, LLC
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