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Dear Esmond, Jan, and all, [resending]
To get our new techies oriented, here is a brief description of what is installed at NSM, as far as I know. Feel free to comment or add additional details (or questions), one and all. Jan, it would be great if you want to turn this into a diagram or other useful format.
A couple of years ago I wrote up a guide for the teachers about what equipment is on campus for classroom use; see the link on the Tech Committee web page here: http://www.nsmontessori.org/drupal/node/32
It has a map of the campus showing which rooms have Airports (WiFi base stations) and various types of printers.
> A diagram showing the machines (hardware and software revs)
Melissa has a spreadsheet listing the computers on campus by serial number. About 110 of them (eMacs and iBooks) were purchased under the 2005-07 magnet grant. Software upgrades range from none (in some classrooms) to current (the 30 eMacs in the lab now have radmind for this purpose, and the Xserve was set up to provide software updates). We have purchased just a few newer iMacs and Macbooks with PTA money and received some donated Dell PCs used in the kindergarten and the office.
> network connectivity (10/100/1G), etc.
Unfortunately a wiring diagram for the campus does not seem to exist, or if it does the district staff didn't have it when we asked a couple of years ago. From what we do know, the campus was wired with fiber optics (!) sometime during the late Clinton administration. There are concentrators in each wing of the school that are linked to a central hub in the book room (on the opposite side of the library from the computer lab) and from there to the server closet (behind the office). From there, we're networked to the district office and out to the Internet (through the district's firewall). The district put in a major upgrade to their network backbone last year (concurrent with switching their phone system to VoIP) which should have sped up our connection to the outside world, but I'm not sure that we have seen that benefit.
There are generally 5 or 6 data ports in each classroom--usually four grouped together (for student computers) and an extra that is often across the room (for a teacher's computer). This almost invariably leaves us one or two ports short of what is needed for a networked printer or WiFi base station. When the magnet grant of 2005-07 purchased all new classroom computers and printers, the teachers got wireless laptops, and one of the desktop computers (eMacs) in most rooms was set up wirelessly, freeing up some ports. But we often have trouble keeping those wireless eMacs connected, and lately the district tech staff has just been adding a small switch to those rooms so that there are enough ports for all of the hardware.
> How many machines are within the school network (thing1, thing2, XSERVE)? Which machine is doing what task (authentication, file server, print server, DNS server)?
The magnet grant was also used to purchase the current Xserve to host student and teacher accounts. As far as I know it is just used for authentication and as a file server for user files--all of the software we use is installed locally on the desktop computers, so no user applications are running there. Wait--there's one exception: Typing Master runs as a web-based application on the server, but I'm not sure if Melissa is using that program with the students anymore. Also it's serving software updates for the lab computers.
Does anyone have the specs for the Xserve? From what I recall, it was a mid-to-low range model when purchased in early 2005. Several other schools on the same magnet grant got the same model, but I suspect that we are using ours more than the other schools.
The Xserve shares the server closet with a Dell server that runs the school attendance software, AERIES. That one is off limits to us civilians--teachers have to access AERIES daily to report attendance and we sometimes get calls for help when it goes down, but those requests have to be referred to the district staff.
Thing1 and Thing2 are two donated Linux servers that we have at our disposal. Dennis, any details on these?
The printers are configured with Bonjour so there is no central print server, although that system has some problems too ("ghost" printers that we uninstalled years ago continue to pop up in the list of available printers).
> Any chance we can migrate towards cheaper commodity hardware, e.g. Linux boxes
A concern here will be the district staff's ability/willingness to let these onto the district network. They are (reasonably) concerned about consistency with the other 14 schools in the district.
Hope this helps in thinking about what we have and what we want. Best,
--Mark
-=- Mark Henderson, Ph.D.
=-= Mills College, Oakland, California USA
-=- www.mills.edu/publicpolicy
-=- www.mills.edu/publicpolicy
From: tech-bounces@nsmontessori.org [tech-bounces@nsmontessori.org] On Behalf Of Petra and Michael [petra_michael@sbcglobal.net]
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 8:45 PM
To: Esmond Chia; gentry@google.com; melissa@nsmontessori.org
Cc: Aaron; tech@nsmontessori.org
Subject: Re: [Tech] Techies' opinions on new server please?
Great questions! We will not proceed until we figure this out as a group. Besides Melissa, Mark has the most intimate knowledge of the set-up and maybe even a map, and Aaron and Dennis know the server. I don't know what information the district has.
I think we should meet to brainstorm. I was hoping that we could move forward before break. Anyone who is around tomorrow morning, come by the lab and let's see if we can figure out a time to get together. I imagine we won't be hearing form the district anytime soon, but maybe we can get Jason from the district on the phone if we need him. If we can't figure anything out before break, we will meet the first week after, but let's see if we can at least keep the communication open until then.
Petra
I think we should meet to brainstorm. I was hoping that we could move forward before break. Anyone who is around tomorrow morning, come by the lab and let's see if we can figure out a time to get together. I imagine we won't be hearing form the district anytime soon, but maybe we can get Jason from the district on the phone if we need him. If we can't figure anything out before break, we will meet the first week after, but let's see if we can at least keep the communication open until then.
Petra
From: Esmond Chia <esmond@gmail.com>
To: Petra and Michael <petra_michael@sbcglobal.net>; gentry@google.com; melissa@nsmontessori.org
Cc: Aaron <aaron@thenumberfortytwo.com>; tech@nsmontessori.org
Sent: Mon, December 14, 2009 7:40:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Tech] Techies' opinions on new server please?
Hi Petra,
For those of us without an intimate knowledge of the school setup, is there an architecture diagram somewhere that can be referred to? A diagram showing the machines (hardware and software revs), network connectivity (10/100/1G), etc.
How many machines are within the school network (thing1, thing2, XSERVE)? Which machine is doing what task (authentication, file server, print server, DNS server)? Any chance we can migrate towards cheaper commodity hardware, e.g. Linux boxes? Any possibilities for current hardware to be upgraded rather than purchasing a new server? What about other possibilities like updating all drivers, setting timeouts on logged in accounts, etc.
I think many of us in the Tech Club would love to help, but without a clear understanding of the system, are unable to provide advice/assistance.
Regards
Esmond
For those of us that are unable to help, could y
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Petra and Michael <petra_michael@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Dennis,
Can you test it tomorrow with a couple of kids and see if it helps? I would love to have another 6 months to scrounge up money for the server!
Petra
Subject: Re: [Tech] Techies' opinions on new server please?
From: Aaron <aaron@thenumberfortytwo.com>
To: Petra and Michael <petra_michael@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Dennis Gentry <gentry@google.com>; Petra Silton <petrasilton@gmail.com>; tech@nsmontessori.org
Sent: Mon, December 14, 2009 4:09:50 PM
Since the problem is AFP, switching their home directories to NFS (what Dennis said about thing1 and thing2) would likely help a lot. It's just the task of actually doing it. This should take the majority of the load off the server and possibly spare us another year or two.
-=Aaron
On Dec 14, 2009, at 4:03 PM, Petra and Michael wrote:
_______________________________________________If this works, does it solve our problems? And for how long do you think before we just need to bite the bullet?
petra
From: Dennis Gentry <gentry@google.com>
To: Petra Silton <petrasilton@gmail.com>
Cc: tech@nsmontessori.org; melissa@nsmontessori.org
Sent: Mon, December 14, 2009 3:43:54 PM
Subject: Re: Techies' opinions on new server please?
The other ("free") option is to proceed with putting the student accounts on those linux boxes, thing1 and thing2. That will help if the network between the machine room and the lab is robust, which I'm not sure it is. (Actually, a new XServe won't help if the network between the machine room and the lab isn't robust.)
If DNS on the XServe is turned off, are all the clients (i.e., student machines) timing out on the first DNS entry and then using the district DNS? That would cause slowness on the student machines. If so, we should re-point their DNS to whatever we decide is canonical.
I guess I should come by the lab and check it out. I would be happy to move a test subset of the student accounts to thing1/thing2 for testing -- thing1 and thing2 are all ready to serve AFS.
About upgrading to the latest version of Leopard: Isn't that what Jason did over the summer? Was there another update since then? (I admit I am not current on Leopard releases since I don't run it myself anymore.)
Dennis
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:17 PM, Petra Silton <petrasilton@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi techies,
I want us to do research on our end as the district is going to recomend something, and I want to know what we think. (I know there is a laugh line in there somewhere). Aaron wants us to get the newest, latest and greatest from Apple. What is that and what would it cost? What are our options? Do we have to put out all our $ at once? How many $s?
I had a chat with Phyllis, and I can probably come up with about $5k, assuming that we don't need to do this more than everytime Mark has a 4th grader (every 5 years or so).
Petra
ps thanks to our apple consultant.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <melissa@nsmontessori.org>
Date: Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Subject: [Tech] XSERVE issue
To: jcowley@smfc.k12.ca.us, parmanino@smfc.k12.ca.us, redson@smfc.k12.ca.us
Cc: tech@nsmontessori.org
Hi Jason,Pat and Rick,
In reference to our email discussion about the XSERVE and the speed, we
asked a consultant from Apple to come in and give his opinion on it.
We had someone come in to see if he could find anything wrong with the
server so we might figure out why some things are so slow. He looked
through the logs a few things that might help:
1. named is crashing every 10 seconds. He turned off DNS in Server Admin
for now since it still works from the clients.
2. kadmind is complaining about a missing configuration file.
3. He also suggested upgrading to the latest version of Leopard.
The other thing he noticed was that the load was around 2-3 and as soon as
the students logged in AFP went up to 100%, the load went to 18.
Obviously, we can create local accounts on each machine, but this isn't a
very good solution. We did this though to get through the week. Login is
student, password student.
We have decided that it is time for us to purchase a new XSERVE. We would
like to know if any of you are available this week to have an open
discussion about what we should purchase. This would be in terms of cost,
and life span. If you can't and would like to do this via conference call
or email, that's fine too. We would like to purchase it before the end of
the year and get it installed as early as possible in January. Would this
be possible with your workload?
Please let me know your thoughts, we want your involvement and to work
within your schedule as well as ours.
Thanks for your help,
Melissa
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