Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (133 mails)

[ian <ian.lynch2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2003-06-26 at 14:26, Paul Geary wrote:
> Hi All
> 
> I want to put together a small server to run SuSE Linux which will form
> a central point between a small Solaris network and a small Windows 2000
> network used for Cisco router courses (Totals around 20 machines
> initially). The machine would be the gateway to internet services and
> email (and anything else I can think of).
> 
> I'd like to experiment with a raid based system possibly dual CPU (Not
> strictly necessary for a small network but I want to play with these
> things myself and also have plenty of room for expansion should the nix
> side of things take off).
> 
> Any recommendations gratefully received.
> Cheers
> Paul Geary

We'll build you one. Contact chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Strictly speaking
dual CPUs don't make that much difference when compared with their cost.
We did some tests on a Linux thin client which with 16 concurrent users
all on OpenOffice.org Draw you would think would make a big difference.
In practice even with a 1 gig P3 the processor was never saturated, but
RAM makes a lot of difference particularly if the machine starts
swapping. Also the thing that makes servers expensive is the disc
subsystems and backup. SCSI, RAID etc put the price up a lot. If you
have plenty of RAM, and RAM is cheap, better to put money into RAM than
disc drives because delivering files from solid state is always going to
be faster than from a mechanical disc. Windows tends to be more disc
intensive so SCSI, RAID etc will make more of a difference. A good
reason for using Linux is that it saves you in hardware costs as well as
software licenses. Probably cheaper to have 2 lowish spec servers and
make one redundant but benefit from two in parallel than buy one all
singing and dancing machine which in practice gives little real
performance advantage. Actually probably two servers will out perform
one anyway. Another reason people tend to buy one mega server with
Windows is again licensing costs. Doesn't matter how many Linux servers
you have the licensing cost is still zero.


Hope this helps.

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ian <ian.lynch2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>