[Server-devel] Favorite School Server hardware?

[Tony Anderson]

Hi, George, Adam

Decisions about performance require measurement under the actual (or 
simulated) workload.

Use of the schoolserver is rapidly evolving and problems with 
performance are to be expected.

These problems are not related directly to the model and serial number 
of the school server. They
often relate to the amount of memory, the implementation of caching in 
the server, the performance
of the network including routers.

The search functions in IIAB require processing by the school server. 
The Atom and Arm processors are
not in a performance class with I5 (but I5 systems require much more 
power and cooling and $). Collaborating
requires performance from ejabberd and places a substantial load on the 
network. Video and audio streaming
places little burden on the school server but heavy burdens on the 
network. Having 100+ XOs surfing the
internet via the school server is supported by squid caching but, as 
most of us have experienced, can be excruciatingly
slow due to the limited bandwidth of the internet connection.

What we really need is not finger pointing but some serious performance 
measurements in a deployment under different
workloads.

Tony


Message: 2
Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2013 15:18:37 -0500
From: George Hunt<georgejhunt at gmail.com>
To: XS Devel<server-devel at lists.laptop.org>
Subject: [Server-devel] Favorite School Server hardware?
Message-ID:
	<CADfCcpVTK=4p1bb7xH_pn+MRM9nh6XfQ2WXErMZ7MdVfEnpSpw at mail.gmail.com>
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Adam Holt is planning for an XSCE schoolserver deployment in Haiti in
January, and in this instance there's plenty of power, and my favorite
trimslice ARM may be under powered for the number of clients he is
contemplating.

The on-the-ground experience is not good with the trimslice that we
installed earlier this year in a Haiti deployment.  Reports are that no
more than 11 XO1 clients can simultaneously access the Internet In A Box.
We're not sure whether the bottleneck is at the wifi level, (XO's not
registered), the disk drive access, or the raw computing power of the dual
core ARM processor.

What other hardware have people been using recently?  What performance
measures does anyone have?

George