RE: [seul-edu] X-Terminal app server specs

[Chris Hedemark <hedemark@bops.com>]

Seems reasonable enough.  Although again, more memory will give you greater
scalability.  Get it while it's cheap.

The Duron's are quite fast.  We're running Athlons and a couple of
Thunderbirds but more for development purposes.  Couldn't be happier with
them.

Will this machine also be your file server?  That is, will home directories
be stored on it?  If so, you may want to spec out a second hard drive for
/home.  While you cannot parallelize IDE drive operations, the drive heads
won't have to thrash quite as much which will help performance and increase
scalability.  We just picked up a 75GB drive for under $300 so adding huge
amounts of capacity doesn't add much to the bottom line.

For the power supply, you may want to upgrade from the surge supressor to at
least a small UPS so the server can shut down automatically if the power
goes out.  This will decrease the amount of handholding needed if the
machine comes back up, you're not around, and everyone is standing around
scratching their heads wondering why the server won't start.

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Loss [mailto:dloss@suscom.net]
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 10:36 AM
To: seul-edu@seul.org
Subject: Re: [seul-edu] X-Terminal app server specs


Chris Hedemark wrote:

> I've built some app servers.  What kind of apps are you running and how
> intensively do you anticipate having them used?

That's kind of up in the air at the moment.  The lab will be in a local
community center.  I figure they'll need some internet capability (a web
browser; perhaps a graphical FTP client, IRC, and maybe USENET) and standard
office stuff (word processing, spreadsheet, etc.).  Beyond that, I don't
know.
If they want to have an internet presence of their own (web server, etc.),
I'll
recommend another system for that.

I went here: http://www.affordablecomputers.com/custombuilds/aci_linthun and
specified a 700 MHz Duron, 512 MB RAM, a 30.7 GB IDE drive, 2 SMC EZ-Card
10/100
ethernet cards, Mandrake 7.2 and Star Office 5.2 preinstalled, an Onstream
30GB
IDE Digital Internal Tape Drive and media, and an APC surge supressor, for
$1117.  Everything else is the standard selection.  Does that seem
reasonable?

--
Doug Loss                 God is a comedian playing
Data Network Coordinator  to an audience too afraid
Bloomsburg University     to laugh.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Voltaire