Re: [ILUG] [OT] Cascading switches

From: Conor Daly (conor.daly at domain oceanfree.net)
Date: Tue 14 Aug 2001 - 09:33:56 IST


On Mon, Aug 13, 2001 at 08:48:21PM +0100 or so it is rumoured hereabouts,
Niall O Broin thought:
> On Mon, Aug 13, 2001 at 05:12:23PM +0100, Paul Jakma wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Niall O Broin wrote:
> >
> > > guarantees that it won't fail :-) Mightn't be a bad idea to have a spare
> > > server too. As that's probably outside the budget,
> >
> > well he was talking about having the server be a multi-CPU, multi-GB
> > thingy.. so i'd suggest the same budget would cover having 2 uni-CPU,
> > 256 to 512MB machines instead.
> >
>
> Hmm - I don't remember seeing a machine spec. though I'm sure I remember
> seeing a figure of 1800 quid for the server. Won't get you much in the
> multi-CPU, multi-GB field, but definitely enough to buy two 1GHz Athlons
> with 512M RAM + 40GB IDE drives, given current prices on everything. Just

IEP1600 for dual PIII 800MHz, 1Gb RAM, 2x 40Gb IDE
IEP700 for switches, client NICs and cabling

> Then you can have both servers running, users can pick
> one from xdm and will soon learn to pick the one with lower load, and home
> directories can be on one box, rsync'ed regularly with the other box. If the
> box hosting the home directories goes down, it's a minor change to have it
> use its local copy of the home directories. And in this scenario, you get a
> total of 200Mbits bandwidth to the server(s) though given the load, as
> somebody pointed out, 100Mbit is more than adequate anyway.

Only difficulty then is the complexity that creeps in. I'll be handing
this setup to a linux / network newbie who'll have to rely on email
support only (the nearest unix admin is probably a few hundred miles
away).

Though, assuming both servers route through a single switch, it's really
only the rsync type stuff that needs to be different. Time to think
further methinks...

Conor

-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at domain oceanfree.net>
Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
Faenor.cod.ie
 12:21am  up 60 days, 39 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Hobbiton.cod.ie
 12:21am  up 60 days,  1:05,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00


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