Re: [seul-edu] How big a server?

[Cameron Miller <cdmiller@adams.edu>]

The main file server for UNI's CNS is a dual cpu Dell with 2GB RAM and
hardware RAID 5.  It runs Samba/NFS/LPRng for the file sharing/printing.

There are several thousand user accounts in an LDAP tree, (seperate
servers), and a synchronized flat SAMBA password file for NT logins.

The file server supports ~250 concurrent samba sessions each day with no
problems.  The main constrait is adequate RAM for the smbd's, so check
and see how much RAM one SAMBA session needs.  Some Windows NT logins
take a while, (15 to 20 seconds), but are snappy once authenticated and
profiles are downloaded.

For details on the current setup check with the current administrator
of: http://www.cns.uni.edu

- cameron

On Mon, 2001-11-12 at 15:33, Jan Hlavacek wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I am sure there must be somebody out there who has done something
> similar and can give me some advice: 
> 
> our college has several student labs running NTs. Our department (math)
> is currently the only department that uses Linux, and our usage has been
> so far restricted to a web server running WIMS. We always wanted to make
> some of the excellent unix math software available to our students on
> the desktop. We have a budget proposal for a linux lab, but that will
> take a while to get through (if it ever goes through). 
> 
> Lately, our chemistry department contacted us asking for help setting up
> some sort of unix solution for their students.  One possible solution I
> found is using an x-server on the NT machines in the labs to login to
> one linux server. I managed to get cygwin with xfre86 running over the
> network from a SMB share, and it works beautifully with my desktop linux
> machine. However, to actually be able to use this we will need powerful
> enough server to support many simultaneous connections. And this is wnat
> my question is:
> 
> We may have several hundreds items in passwd file, and as much as 50
> (usually not more than 25, but let's assume two classes working at the
> same time) users logged in at once.  The applications used would be some
> mathematical software (CAS of a sort, octave, maybe kseg or drgenius),
> molecular modelling software and some other computational chemistry
> stuff, so it may be kind of computationally intensive, but i wouldn't
> expect anything outrageus, these are undergraduate students.  Does
> somebody have any estimate about how big machine (memory, CPU) am I
> looking for?  
> 
> Thank a lot for any suggestions or pointers to information.
> 
-- 
- cameron miller
- UNIX Systems Administrator
- Pipeline Fool
- (719)587-7685
- cdmiller@adams.edu