Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (303 mails)
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Crashes and reserve servers for schools...
- From: David Bowles <dbowles@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 12:21:55 +0000 (UTC)
- Message-id: <1297490329.20031204122145@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
How many school network configurations include a reserve
'logon' and curriculum file-serving capability?
For example, such a capability might comprise a reserve PC that's
normally held off-line ready to be deployed when a school's principal
server suffer a catastrophic crash ...note my use of the word 'when'
here, rather than 'if'!
An alternative configuration might comprise a pre-configured server OS
on a hard-disk that can easily be installed in one of the school's
faster curriculum workstations. This would at least provide a logon
and a restricted file-serving capability, in case resurrecting a
downed server proves far more problematic than at first anticipated.
The reason I ask is because at the two schools where I did my teaching
practice both suffered major problems with their principal curriculum
servers. In both cases a subsequent server crash brought down the
entire school-wide network for a continuous period in excess of four
whole weeks!!!
These problems were compounded by the fact all 200 plus PCs at each
school were configured to be completely inoperable unless the user
first 'logged on' to the school network.
Furthermore both these schools experienced such difficulty restoring
previously backed-up data, most students lost all of their coursework
including work that was awaiting assessment.
At one school they eventually narrowed their server problem down to
mismatched dual Pentium processors installed on the motherboard
compounded by an intermittently faulty SCSI cable that served to
repeatedly scramble the data held on the Raid-5 disk array.
At the other school they had previously suffered some apparently minor
data corruptions (from their users point-of-view) that prevented their
tape backup system from completing a full backup. And then a few
months later the server crashed!
Is the truly catastrophic scale of these disasters typical of your
experience within other UK schools?
...and surely this represents an ideal opportunity to get Linux into
schools, initially in the form of a low-cost (no additional server
licences need be purchased) reserve 'login', 'data'
and 'Internet access' server capability.
David Bowles
TeacherLab / Education-Support
'logon' and curriculum file-serving capability?
For example, such a capability might comprise a reserve PC that's
normally held off-line ready to be deployed when a school's principal
server suffer a catastrophic crash ...note my use of the word 'when'
here, rather than 'if'!
An alternative configuration might comprise a pre-configured server OS
on a hard-disk that can easily be installed in one of the school's
faster curriculum workstations. This would at least provide a logon
and a restricted file-serving capability, in case resurrecting a
downed server proves far more problematic than at first anticipated.
The reason I ask is because at the two schools where I did my teaching
practice both suffered major problems with their principal curriculum
servers. In both cases a subsequent server crash brought down the
entire school-wide network for a continuous period in excess of four
whole weeks!!!
These problems were compounded by the fact all 200 plus PCs at each
school were configured to be completely inoperable unless the user
first 'logged on' to the school network.
Furthermore both these schools experienced such difficulty restoring
previously backed-up data, most students lost all of their coursework
including work that was awaiting assessment.
At one school they eventually narrowed their server problem down to
mismatched dual Pentium processors installed on the motherboard
compounded by an intermittently faulty SCSI cable that served to
repeatedly scramble the data held on the Raid-5 disk array.
At the other school they had previously suffered some apparently minor
data corruptions (from their users point-of-view) that prevented their
tape backup system from completing a full backup. And then a few
months later the server crashed!
Is the truly catastrophic scale of these disasters typical of your
experience within other UK schools?
...and surely this represents an ideal opportunity to get Linux into
schools, initially in the form of a low-cost (no additional server
licences need be purchased) reserve 'login', 'data'
and 'Internet access' server capability.
David Bowles
TeacherLab / Education-Support
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