Hardware isn't hard for me I can visualize a machine that will do the
work that needs to be done.
Questions
How many computers will be drawing how much data over the wire?
How much disk space does an average distribution use?
What kind of distributions will be available base, server, workstation,
gamer, etc... ?
How many distributions?
A basic computer will work but under load will it choke on the IO?
Hardware is expensive but so is down time at an install fest. Using
quality server hardware for this is important because this machine will
be moved around.
A nice older compaq server would be stable, safe, flexible, and
expandable. The big sell on this is the fact that the server could
start with a smaller amount of space and easily grow to a huge amount of
space.
Pentium 2 or 3, 1 gig of ram, and 5 @ 18 gig disks would be a screamer.
At a later time an external storage array could be added. The array
could have 4 gig, 9 gig , 18 gig, or 36 gig disks. A combination of
disks could be put in it. A compaq 4100 storage array takes 12 disks
A compaq 3200 raid controller would be perfect
Put 2 compaq 10/100 nicks in it and the thing will through put until
dooms day.
I went out to eBay and looked up "Compaq Proliant" now I'm really going
to need to get a job :-P
I hate/love/hate/love/hate/love ebay! Oops sorry :-[
I found the following, they're work horses.
Proliant 5500 dual Xeon PII 450 loaded for $277.00 at the current bid.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3048391329&category=11212
Proliant 6500 quad Xeon P2 400 loaded for $122.00 at current bid.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3049004827&category=11212
Proliant 1850 dual PII 450 and an external storage array for $31.00 at
the current bid.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3049639568&category=11212
Lots of possibilities.
It may be possible to get a server like the above donated.
Sam.
Rick Meyerhoff wrote:
> I got a computer (no hard drives) from Wil that I tried to power up to
> see what CPU & RAM it had but it's not sending any signal to the
> monitor. No POST, but the fan comes on & LEDs light. It has a wacky
> solenoid and switch that I assume is to not allow you to work on it
> with the case open or not allow you open the case while the power is
> on or maybe it's a security feature to prevent tampering. Anyway it's
> a Compaq and the case is a little rough to work in. I think it's a
> P166, which is a bit slow even for a distro server. It has three DIMM
> sticks, one of unknown size, one 64 Mb, one 32 Mb. It currently has a
> brand new 52x CD-RW in the case.
>
> I have a 2Gig SCSI disk, and some external SCSI cases that have
> needed a good home for a while.
>
> I suspect that our best bet for getting a lot of disk space
> is to use SCSI. With SCSI we can more disks, even if they are small
> and if need be I think we can use multiple SCSI controllers.
>
> If we have parts for one or two machines that would be great but
> three is probably overkill.
>
> I was going to put this in the software thread but it's pretty closely
> related to hardware. Is this a good use for LVM? Since we will
> probably have various sized disks and the data on the disks can fairly
> easily be re-created from the net? I'm thinking that the OS and all
> the mechanism for doing the mirroring etc. would be on one disk that's
> *not* part of the logical volume but all the distros *would* be on the
> LV. I know almost nothing about the LVM so please tell me if this is
> not a good application of it.
>
_______________________________________________
TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list