[LUAU] looking for feedback samba/LDAP server

[Clifton Royston]

On Tue, Feb 07, 2006 at 04:41:39PM -1000, pnakashi at k12.hi.us wrote:
> http://tinyurl.com/9bmq3
 
  "Your wish list Detail is empty."  Did you give it a title that could
  be searched for?

> Hi all, The above URL links to a wish list for our school's soon to
> be purchased samba/LDAP server. I'm not great at hardware, so I'd
> like to get some advice from someone more qualified. Any feedback
> would be appreciated.

  I often like to use Dan Bernstein's "Standard Workstation"
recommendations as a starting point - they are geared towards a "common
denominator" hardware that provides high value for money and will work
with Linux, FreeBSD and other open OSes.  At varying points he's
recommended OpenBSD and FreeBSD as the OS; at the moment I see he's
recommending Ubuntu.

  Here's the latest version, with detailed build pics:
<http://cr.yp.to/hardware/build-20060107.html>

  It's usually linked from here:
<http://cr.yp.to/hardware.html>

> A vendor solution would be fine also, if there's a good one out there
> that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
 
> I think we need 2 gig of ram and 15K SCSI.

  Hmmm, what kind of performance demands have you estimated?  Off the
cuff it sounds to me like the 15K SCSI is a bit of overkill.

  In terms of disk lifetime you're probably better with slower drives -
and if it's a file server inevitably people will put essential files on
it and then not get around to backing it up, so you really *must* have
RAID!  More slower drives in a RAID 1 (or 0+1) configuration is usually
a much better value.  You might well get 2 or even 4 large high-grade
7200rpm SATA drives for the price of that 15K SCSI drive.

  If you want to buy a prebuilt server from a vendor, I personally
recommend www.asacomputers.com - they do good work, are Linux- and BSD-
friendly, and can help you with recommendations.

  As to qualifications, I've been building all my own machines (DOS,
Win, and U**x) for at least 15 years, and I built some of the servers
at LavaNet and Tiki Technologies.  (Many of the rest we bought from
ASA Computers.)
  -- Clifton

-- 
    Clifton Royston  --  cliftonr at iandicomputing.com / cliftonr at lava.net
       President  - I and I Computing * http://www.iandicomputing.com/
 Custom programming, network design, systems and network consulting services