Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1999 13:46:51 -0500 (EST) From: Jaime Kikpole <jaime@malkav.snowmoon.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Merging 2 servers? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912121330540.54188-100000@malkav.snowmoon.com>
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Before I ask my question, I need to provide a little background. I work as the network administrator for a public school district in New York. About a year ago I replaced the NT email server and the MacOS web server with a FreeBSD 3.0-Release system with qmail, Cyrus, apache, etc. Being a public school district, we're always short on tech budgets, so we bought a nice desktop computer (Compaq 5150, 128MB RAM, added a second HD and a second ethernet NIC) and managed to do this with only $1500. The staff have loved the increase in performance and stability. :) Recently, thanks to a grant, we added a server to acts as a file server (via the netatlk-asun port and, to a lesser extent, the samba port) and email server (via qmail, imap-uw, apache-php3, and twig) for the students. This server is still fairly new, but the students in the middle school (ages 11 to 14) seem to love their new email access. I switched from using Cyrus to imap-uw because it was much easier to administer, even though it had fewer features and (arguably) less stability. If you're still reading after all of that, I want to thank you. :) Here's the question. I would like to improve the "staff" server, i.e. the desktop computer with two IDE drives which is serving email and files to the staff. The new "student" server has shown me what a joy RAID and tape drives can be to performance and stability. Also, it would be nice to be able to do an upgrade only once and let everyone benefit. :) So what would you folks recommend? I've been considering replacing the staff's server with a modest computer with RAID and more RAM. But I know that NIS would simplify my user maintenance. I just don't know if its usable here. The newer server (i.e. the "student" server) has far more RAM and CPU power than it needs, but not enough disk space for the staff to be added to it. Specifically, it has 1152MB of RAM, an external 9.1GB SCSI HD for booting, an internal 4HD x 9.1GB RAID-5 array (total 27GB of usable space) for /home, and a Pentium-III 600MHz with an empty second slot. The students get 5MB to 15MB each, depending on what classes they take. The staff should really get about 100-150MB of disk space so that they can collect assignments from their students. Does anyone have any advise about NIS, NFS, keeping two servers but replacing one, adding RAID (and booting from it, preferably) to the older server, or any other possible improvement? Thanks in advance, Jaime To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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