Solution for school lab

[Dennis Glatting]

On Sun, 30 Oct 2011, Sergio de Almeida Lenzi wrote:

> I use a solution that is:
> 1) a "large" Freebsd box (phenon X4,8Gb of memory, 1TB disk)
> 2) OS=Freebsd 8.2 with all gnome2.32 installed
> 3) Virtualbox 10.x  installed in FreeBSD
> 4) NT 2003 server with unlimited number of users on rdp (the iso is in
> internet or torrent).
> 5) internet connection
> Here this would cost about US$400
>
> Install the system using zfs, insert all users can hold about 1000 users 
> Setup FreeBSD to boot diskless (and so will run on all the old machines 
> in your place) using either pxe or custom CD.
>
> The users will use Gnome interface, and those who wants windows,
> can use via rdesktop, pointing on the NT server on the same machine.
>
> You will need a swith with ONE gigabit port, and the others is
> 100Mbits...
>
> This setup you have:
> about 1200 applictions (from the FreBSDports),
> some include:
> java, eclipse, python, c, c++, multimedia, web browing, office,
> printing, email, chat, calculator, vector drawing, dia (visio),
> raster image editor (gimp), monodevelop(.NET devel framework),
> sql (postgresql), sql administration (pgadmin3).
>
> Reliable, fast, rock solid, central administration...
>
> It just works....
>

Consider installing VMWare ESXi and instances of whatever operating system 
you like. We have template operating systems we copy to new/replacement 
instances. You can export your disks to the instances but with all things 
you gain some, you loose some.

As someone else mentioned, consider netboot. The booted instance can do 
whatever they want to your hardware but disks are likely to have to be 
re-initialized each time, which is fine if you are using disks for swap 
and other temporary things.

With regard to VirtualBox, someone needs to fix it (probably just update 
the port). The network driver (IIRC) eats memory.


>
> []
>
> Sergio
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