[plug] Server Hardware Specs -slightly offtopic

[Bernd Felsche]

On Monday 07 June 2004 16:41, Patrick Tehvand wrote:
> I was wondering if any of you had some links to sites with info on
> specifications for servers. More importantly with ratios of what is
> needed per user.

Pretty much a piece-of-string.

Depends very much on what the users are actually doing and what they
need to do.

> I am currently weighing up the pros and cons of moving our two
> diverse networks of students and staff onto the one network but to
> drive such a move a whopping great server or multiple in HA setup
> would be required.  We have about 1200 users with about 500 on at
> any one time.

You need to look at continuity issues and how it affects both user
groups. HA is nice, but if availability isn't such a serious concern
for the larger group, then scaling the demands of the smaller group
to accommodate both groups could be difficult to justify.

If availability is an issue, then you also need to consider
multiple, physically-separated locations and providing
infrastructure at all of them.

Obviously, not all users are in the one physical location, so some
decentralisation is natural.

A single server is easer to manage; but a network of servers is more
fault-tolerant and could provide local services even if there are
significants problems with the network between computing "hubs".

-- 
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