[Server-devel] Installing XS on server for School District need some help

Wed Nov 26 09:07:10 EST 2008

I didn't mean to reply just to you, I put everyone back on the cc.

Ok that all sounds good, when we get back from break on Monday we will give the 0.5 a shot.

As for the network, we have a meeting set up with our HP vendor and our cabling company to do a site survey on the 9th.  We currently have all HP Procurve switches and will be using their Wireless AP's and controller.  Thanks for the advice I will be sure to mention that when we meet.  FYI the 1100 XO's will be split up into 3 buildings on the West Campus, so that will make it a little easier for placing our AP's since they are not all condensed into 1 building.  Over the winter break we will try to squeeze in setting up the first building, so when the kids return they will be ready to go.  That should give us a chance to work out all the bugs with only 325 XO's online.

________________________________________
From: Martin Langhoff [martin.langhoff at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 5:29 PM
To: Josh Totoro
Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Installing XS on server for School District need some help

You replied only to me -- was this on purpose or accidental? If on
purpose, do forward this bit of conversation to the public list :-)

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 7:40 PM, Josh Totoro
<jtotoro at chestercommunitycharter.org> wrote:
> Thanks for your reply, I actually had the .4 version so I am dl-ing the .5 now

Good start :-)

> The installer was not able to see the disks at all(I think) so I will try what you suggested.
>  I am almost positive that the raid card is ok since the windows was running fine before
> I tried the XS install.

Some raid cards might have drivers for Windows in the standard Windows
install media, and yet they don't have drivers on the stock standard
Linux install disks. Dell is getting better at picking hw with good
drivers for all OSs...

> You said it is tricky to set up multiple XS servers.  We currently have 2 campuses running on separate subnets connected by 2 t-1's with point to point routers.  We also plan to Vlan all the XO traffic directly to their perspective server do you think this will make it a little easier to set up.

As long as they are in separate subnets, they'll be fine. Note that
the XS wants to handle its own subnet - handing out dhcp leases and
acting as the main router to the WAN/internet, and the XOs expect to
be in a network managed by the XS. Have a read through the docs and
have a play with the 0.5 release to see what this means.

One thing I forgot in my earlier msg was that you'll want a good
number of access points to support 1100 machines. We're recommending
careful planning on this - a site surve to understand the RF
properties of the place, is important. A rough estimate is 1 AP for
every 50 laptops if the usage is going to be moderate to high. You
also need to consider wiring and switches.

cheers,

m
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martin Langhoff [mailto:martin.langhoff at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 4:15 PM
> To: Josh Totoro
> Cc: server-devel at lists.laptop.org; Samuel Klein; John F. Hedrick
> Subject: Re: [Server-devel] Installing XS on server for School District need some help
>
> 2008/11/25 Josh Totoro <jtotoro at chestercommunitycharter.org>:
>> Hello, I am a Tech Specialist for a school district in PA.  There are 2 of
>
> Welcome to the list! Even if there's a bit of developer chatter, this
> is the place to be.
>
> A couple of initial ideas that might help:
>
>  - Are you using the XS 0.5 installer? If not... do! I's done and
> released, but I haven't sent out the release announcement formally.
> This page has all the rght links:
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Release_Notes
>
>  - The Dell server you have looks plenty! Two things could be going amiss...
>
>  - One is that the installer has a preset indicating how it will
> format the drives, and it defaults to overwriting existing Linux
> partitions, but preserving existing Windows partitions. So when it
> offers the "how to partition the drive" dialogue, go in and tell it to
> nuke Windows.
>
>  - Second - some hardware raid cards don't have drivers built in into
> Linux. That can be a bit of a pain -- if that's the case, the
> installer won't find any disk to list. If you think that that's the
> problem, the fix is to figure out what the exact model of card it is
> (if possible drill down to exact chipset), and how to get it going
> with Fedora 9.
>
> If the issue is with the RAID card, it might be a better idea to play
> with the desktop machines in the meantime. Or plug a simple PCI SCSI
> card, or even a SATA card in there (you'll need SATA disks...)
>
>> We plan to have 1500+ XO's on our schools network in the coming year, what
>> specs would you recommend for the servers?  We were planning to have 1
>> server on each campus, and about 1100+ XO's on the West and 400 on the
>> East.  Can 1 server handle 1100+ XO's if it has top of the line specs?
>
> Cool - we're starting to use (and tune) the XS in scenarios with many
> laptops. In fact, this development cycle (from now to new year) is
> focused on exactly that, so discussion in the last few weeks has been
> on scalability.
>
> Some notes (more detail in recent discussions in the archive):
>
>  - RAM is the main concern - ejabberd (one of the key services) grows
> significantly iwth large numbers of _connected_ users. 1MB per user is
> what we are seeing (we're working on this). That is the main memory
> hog but there are other services too, so with 4GB RAM you should be
> ok.
>
>  - Budget 2GB of disk space per user for backups.
>
>  - You will _really_ want to use the next release (0.6), planned for
> early January which will have various fixes for scaling issues.
>
>> Would you advise us to set up 2 servers on the West and 1 on the East, and
>> if so what specs should we have on those machines?
>
> One machine should be enough, and setting up and maintaining a
> 2-machine installation is a tricky thing.
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>
> This e-mail is intended for the use of the addressee(s) only and may contain privileged, confidential, or proprietary information of Chester Community Charter School (CCCS). If you have received this message in error, please e-mail administrator at postmaster at chestercommunitycharter.org, then delete the e-mail and destroy any printed copy. CCCS reserves the right to retain, archive, use and disclose any emails that are sent from or to this email address. Thank you.
>

--
 martin.langhoff at gmail.com
 martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff

This e-mail is intended for the use of the addressee(s) only and may contain privileged, confidential, or proprietary information of Chester Community Charter School (CCCS). If you have received this message in error, please e-mail administrator at postmaster at chestercommunitycharter.org, then delete the e-mail and destroy any printed copy. CCCS reserves the right to retain, archive, use and disclose any emails that are sent from or to this email address. Thank you.