[MacTUG] Mac mini Server

[Donald Duff-McCracken]

So danny got me curious!

While I was doing other things this morning I made a generic netboot disk --
no other apps but the apple stuff. After lunch and before being stranded on
the helpdesk I tried netbooting some of my lab macs. As I had not done it
before and because I did not want to mess up my whole lab and due to the
fact that I only had 1/2 an hour, I only netbooted 8 or 9 machines.

They started reasonably fast -- I did not time them but more than a minute
but I would guess less than 2 minutes. When they were up and running it
looked fine. As far as startup, I don't think this is an issue. If I was
running a cluster of clients this way I would get them all to go to sleep
after 20 minutes, and then also have the power down at nite and start up at
6am or whatever. Once they were running they seemed to be behaving fine.
Checking the graphs on the mini, it did not look like it was sweating at all
running 8 or 9 clients.

If I get a chance I will play with this more this week. Perhaps get more
machines running this way.


On 10-01-05 10:26 AM, "Don Duff-McCracken" <dsmccrac at connect.uwaterloo.ca>
wrote:

> Hi Dani
> The only macs I have netbooted off our our mac mini server have been the lab
> machines that netbooted during a deploystudio install. Having said that, I
> was impressed at how it performed.
> 
> Comparing it to our old dual G5 xserve is a bit of an apples to oranges
> thing, partly because the G5 was using netrestore not deploystudio. Having
> said that, the mac mini felt like it could handle more than the xserve, and
> with 2 2ghz processors, the xserve is not a piece of crap!
> 
> I usually build my lab a dozen machines at a time. This decision is more
> based on the fact that a dozen machines seems to saturate the 1gig pipe to
> the server. At any rate, during boot time the mini seemed to boot the
> clients at least as quickly as the g5 did (again, I was using a different
> deployment tool that used a different boot image, so it is not a totally
> fair comparison), and it certainly had no problem saturating the pipe when
> it was time to push out the files.
> 
> Now you have me curious, perhaps I will try to make a proper netboot image
> and boot up the lab machines from it before the pesky students start using
> it, haha.
> 
> don
> 
> 
> On 10-01-05 9:31 AM, "Dani Roloson" <daroloso at mfcf.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> 
>> Any estimates on how many netboot clients this puppy could handle?
>> 
>> Dani
>> MFCF
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> 
> ------------------------------------
> Donald Duff-McCracken
> Technical Services Manager
> Mapping, Analysis & Design
> Faculty of Environmental Studies
> University of Waterloo
> (519) 888-4567 x32151
> http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/computing/people/don.html
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------------------------------------
Donald Duff-McCracken
Technical Services Manager
Mapping, Analysis & Design
Faculty of Environmental Studies
University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 x32151
http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/computing/people/don.html
------------
To request help from MAD please us Request Tracker. For info see:
http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/computing/faculty_staff/
------------
This email communication is intended as a private communication for the sole
use of the primary addressee and those individuals listed for copies in the
original message. The information contained in this email is private and
confidential and If you are not an intended recipient you are hereby
notified that copying, forwarding or other dissemination or distribution of
this communication by any means is prohibited.  If you are not specifically
authorized to receive this email and if you believe that you received it in
error please notify the original sender immediately.