[Server-devel] Looking for new low power server hardware candidate

Sridhar Dhanapalan sridhar at laptop.org.au
Tue Apr 17 19:27:29 EDT 2012


On 17 April 2012 23:39, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your notes.
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 10:04 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan
> <sridhar at laptop.org.au> wrote:
> But you have some economies of scale :-) do once per school vs do it
> on every machine in the school.
>
> The school XS can be shipped preconfigured, sidestepping the "local
> configuration" barrier.
>
> Thanks for those answers, they clarify a few things for me. I'm with
> you on the "show an XS icon in the network neighbourhood" part, but I
> don't see the "configure XMPP server on _every_ XO" as a good
> tradeoff, if I can prep an XS once (maybe in a central location).
>
> It's relatively easy to prep an XS + switch + APs + cat 5 cabling,
> label all the RJ-45 connectors, and ship it all in a big box. The
> hardest part is guessing the cat 5 lengths right ;-) -- much better to
> ship a crimping tool, cable, RJ-45s.

Our deployment methodology appears to be different from the others
I've seen in other countries. We are trying to scale *down*, not up. I
have a rule here that no technology is introduced unless it can be
deployed and managed by a non-technical person with minimal training.
Shipping pre-configured servers and other infrastructure builds a
dependency that will cause problems later down the track, and creates
a burden on us.

We generally do not have any support and only begrudging permission
from education departments. We are working around this by
building/configuring the technology so that the teachers and
communities can totally own the deployment for themselves.
Unfortunately the XS in its current state does not allow for this.

Sridhar


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