Education Case Study: Performance and future proofing

How things got started...

Need to separate the student workstations from the teachers' network for security reasons. A separated student network offered us the flexibility to install and maintain our own software without having to use the teacher networks department based IT Support service over which we had limited control. students couldn't have individual logins on teacher network. Linux based server platform offered us all the functionality of the teacher net but with no cost.

Why Free Software?

GNU/Linux was chosen because of the low cost and licensing arrangements. The school was being quoted thousands of dollars for CALs. The school had no technical skills in managing Windows2000 server. The choice was between learning something that would cost a lot of money or learning something that didn't. Performance and future proofing were also major considerations particularly the possibility of one day running K12 LTSP across the school.

The plan...

Problem one. Build a server. Installed RH 7.3, SAMBA, DNS, BIND, Apache. LDAP Tuned kernel carefully so that it would sit in small footprint. Assembled server as a PIII 1G with Raid1 2x40GB HD 1GB NIC and 500MB. Wrote script to automate upload text file of users. Conect Win2k workstations to new Samba domain. Build Squid Proxy server. Build Backup server. Use 3 workstations to test K12 LTSP project for future implementation. Each student logs in has access to their own private share, a public share, lessons share, applications share. Problems: Samba uses a lot of RAM as we have given each user a number of shares. At roughly 440k per user per share RAM gets eaten up pretty quickly. More RAM bought. Problems: LDAP runs out of cache so tuning required to increase disk space available. Sparkies turn off main power to server room. No solution to that one.

Evaluation...

The finished network exceeds expectations in terms of reliability and power. No other school in the region has a server that has been up for as long or that provides as many users with as much functionality. Squid reduces considerably the monthly download bill.

The Future...

Success of servers means we are now considering a radical move to the desktop. Terminal services could offer the ability to reuse older workstations in areas of need like library, LOTE, homework centre and KLAs where costs of workstations are prohibitive. Trick will be to make the desktops consistent across the school. Solution might be to run K12 LTSP