installing linux on server hardware

erezny

A school just hired me to asses their network problems, and I've run into a very costly problem. The guy who bought the server got scammed and now they have a server, but only an evaluation copy of windows server 2003. This is a small private school, and it isn't worth it spending the 3000 dollars to get the software necessary for the server.

I have 2 questions that i am having a hard time answering. the first is: how much harder is setting up linux on hardware made to be a server (there could be as many as 10 hard drives) compared to an end-user-system. According to the people that I've talked to, windows needs an expert to set up. I've set up linux before on a handful of systems, but i don't know what kind of specialized hardware this thing could have. The best case scenario would be to not have any pay-for operating system, and I'm figuring at the moment that I know gentoo, i just hope I can apply that knowledge to a server system.

The second question applies to network attached hard drives. The school needs network storage more than it needs user and e-mail management, but i am not sure if there are normal limits on how many clients a normal NAS device can service at one time.

Because of the nature of the current evaluation os, i cannot actually log on, and therefore i cannot gather any more information than that it has 4-520mhz xeon processors and a gig of ram.

I would really appreciate it if anybody could even point me to a place to learn more about server hardware and possibilities of solutions for it.
Thanks
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Vitaliy · Guru Joined: 06 Apr 2004 Posts: 451 Location: Brooklyn, NY

Linux is made for server use and it should do the job better than Windows Server 2003, get reading.

erezny · Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 3:18 am Post subject:

The get reading part is currently my problem. A am having trouble finding docs on installing linux on server hardware in a midsized environment (about 60 computers). I know i can talk them into the idea, i am just unsure if i can handle the task without experience with server hardware.

If anybody could point me to a doc source to learn more about servers i would greatly appreciate it. Google isn't helping me much yet.
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jmbsvicetto · Posted: Thu May 18, 2006 3:43 am Post subject:

Hi.

If you need more help with the server, you should post some details about it. If you can, post the brand and model, that will help knowing it better. You say that

F.Ultra · Apprentice Joined: 17 Mar 2004 Posts: 169 Location: Sweden

As others already have said, there is no problem to install Linux on a server hardware, most of the time the server kind of hardware is way better supported under Linux than the end user desktop type of hardware.

So please try and supply a bit more information about the make, model and configuration so we can help you.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat May 20, 2006 5:18 pm Post subject:

erezny,

I've moved your post here from Networking & Security.

I doubt if the server has much special hardware. Boot it with a liveCD, run lspci and post the output.
We can tell you about the hardware from that.

You will need Samba to share things with windows boxes, which I assume the clients will be.
In a school, it needs to be very very secure ... a bigger collection of hackers doesn't exist.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

erezny · Posted: Mon May 22, 2006 11:29 pm Post subject: Thanks

beacuse of the school environment, I looked at redhat and suse, but i didn't find a educational plan that fit the computer type and number of clients. Also, best case possibility for the school is if they have to pay very little for the solution. I wasn't able to find out enough about the computer the last time i was there, but i will be going back to check up on the place this week, so I can figure out what the computer has. Next time i get over there I'll get a live cd to check out the hardware.

Because the school is only k-6 grade, I am more worried about mistakes messing up the system than i am about little hackers, but I hope to be able to administer the system from home, so i will be trying to get good security on it.

for now, i still have to figure out how much change is going to need to be done on each of the win2000 clients. I guess i have a lot of reading to do of samba's manual.

Thanks for the help
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Ast0r · Posted: Tue May 23, 2006 4:03 am Post subject: Re: Thanks