[Samba] Re: hardware question

[Edmond]

Hi Ivo,

I think it depends on your network and data structure of the accessed files.
If anyone else knows somethings better please correct me, I`m only Hardware 
Developper, and only Administrator for my own small networks.

 > Ivo Dancet wrote:
 > What hardware would be able to do this with ease:
 >

E.g. if you use a 100mBit EthernetCard almost every actual Hardware better than 
P300+ 64MB+ IDE/UDMA33+ will be able to manage the troughput.

 > There would be about a hundred (maybe 150 later on) client pc's (win xp
 > and some windows 98) for about 600 students and teachers.

The first performanceproblems you will maybe get, if caching of webpages is used
meaning to generate much traffic with very little Files, resilting in massive 
seek times of your harddisk.

1st example)
For the amount of People (600ppl) and traffic peaks you will have to think about 
the latest Network and IDE-Hardware thats existing.
For example Gigabit Ethernet as a backbone if you have some other routers that 
are able to cache your your traffic.

2nd more cheap and easy solution)
Using some more 100MBit Fast Ethernet Cards in your server to spread the traffic
at the entrance to your Motherboard.
Calculate: 1Card means 8MByte/s maximum throughput. Your Standard PCI Bus is 
32Bit wide and 33MHz fast = 4Byte * 33*10^6 = 132MByte/s.

The traffic has to go first from Ethernet to Memory and second from Memory to 
harddisk which means to divide your maximum throughput by 2 = max. usable 66MByte/s.
So it makes no sense to insert more than 6Cards into your server (which is 
already al lot!)

For these traffic Peaks your IDE Hardware (16Bit wide ) should be able to 
transfer more than 66MByte/s but don't forget about the seek times!
So in your case I would prefer ATA-6 (133MHz) or maybe serial ATA?
You can also think about a Raid System you can use to double your IDE- 
Datathrouput, but that means also to to reduce your relyablillity.

Better in my opinion is the following:
1.) Increase your server Memory to e.g. 1GB+ to reduce the seek times of your 
IDE Hardware.
2.) If your student Accounts are working with Linux and are having their home 
accounts on one of your servers, it is maybe possible to generate much less 
network traffic, because only Input and Ouput is transferred over the Network, 
Not the data itself (export DISPLAY).

 > Off course I do want to backup stuff too.
Less numer of disks will make backups easier. (I'm using rsync for dayly backups 
also from disk to disk) So only the changed data has to be transferred. And only 
the oldest data has to be overwritten. You have alltime a last day fullbackup, 
with only incremental data transfers :-) (At least very fine for me)

But please be careful with all what I said and build up your own Mind. Mybe some 
others will answer to my "silly" statements ;-)

> I must install a samba server as PDC for my school. The server would 
> authenticate users using openldap (on the same server). And if possible, 
not used right now!


> I would also run an intranet on it (apache, php, mysql).
> They have to have home dirs and there will also be some other shares, 
> including one for printing on the server.
should be not any problem in my opinion

Hope to help you a little and have a nice day,

Edmond