Sean Miller wrote: > Hi Rob, > > Can you just post a little about the infrastructure you've put in place? > > Is this thin client? > > Sean > Yep no problem.
Basically (a shortened version), the system is using Ubuntu 8.04.2 with the LTSP server packages installed and a few extra applications from Edubuntu (educational software mainly). The server itself is a Dell PowerEdge R300 with an Intel Xeon 2.66GHz Quad Core CPU, 4GB Ram and 2 x 250GB hard drives attached to a RAID controller running as a mirror. The server has two Gigabit NICs built in, one (eth1) is attached to a HP 8-port Gigabit switch which in turn connects to the LTSP clients, the other port (eth0) is attached to an IPCop box which has the Update Accelerator and Advanced Proxy addons installed (Update Accelerator caches updates for Windows & Linux so if we run an install day it will save bandwidth plus any updates the server gets are cached too and Advanced Proxy provides content filtering, IIRC using SquidGuard). The client machines are fairly old Dell Optiplex GX110 machines with P3 1GHz CPUs and 256MB Ram. They have had their CD drives left in but hard drives removed. The clients boot over the network via PXE. Originally we were going to use some old AMD K6/2 450 machines which were donated by a school but due to the amount of time they were sat in my garage they started to rust, plus they were AT cases and didn't have any USB ports so it would have added extra costs for PCI USB cards and Compact Flash to IDE adaptors to boot them up with. The clients work in the same was as a standard thin client (albeit desktop size machines rather than something that can be mounted on the monitor). We purchased brand new 19" Widescreen monitors for the clients and Trevor who runs the community centre managed to get some keyboards and mice. All in all it works really well. The monitors are detected and the clients boot at the correct widescreen resolution, sound works out of the box (something which was a real chore to get working in the old LTSP version 3 packages a couple of years back) and Flash also works (I used the Flash 10 plugin direct from Adobe). One or two apps don't seem to like working on thin clients (Tuxtyping won't let the user quit and Audacity crashes) but I'm sure the fussy apps could possibly run as local applications (not tried this yet). I estimate the whole cost was about £3000 for 6 clients, that covered the server (which was close to £2000 IIRC), monitors (which were about £100 a pop) and materials for the cabinets. The kit was purchased about a year ago so I presume it would be a bit cheaper (considering monitors are nearer to about £70 each now). If I did it again I would also build a server from components too. I originally spec'd up a server for about £600 which was around the same spec as the Dell server but one of the other guys helping on the project wanted us to get a Dell server with the 3 years next day business support, raid controller and Remote Access Card which pushed the cost up quite a bit. I did work out that a quad core server with two 250GB hard drives and 4GB ram would be closer to about £400 to £500 nowadays, possibly even cheaper. In fact I dare say a quad core server with 4GB Ram might have been a bit overkill for 6 clients. I think that covers it, if you want to know anything else just let me know. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
