Not sure if this helps or not.<div><br></div><div>We just put in a new Xserve for the JSS. 2 x 2.93 Quad-Core CPU's. 24GB RAM. Connected via Gigabit (Link Aggregation between 2 Gigabit ports).</div><div><br></div><div>
Yesterday we were imaging 30 Intel iMacs with about a 60GB image. The throughput hit about 120MB/s with the average being 80MB/s. During that time CPU utilization sat around 10% (out of 100%).</div><div><br></div><div>
Point being that, in terms of imaging (with unicast), you are most likely going to max out the network throughput before you max out the CPU or RAM.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I'm not sure how it will preform during the school year with all the policies, check-ins, and recons happening. (We have around 2500 clients)<br clear="all">--<br>Brad Rellinger<br>Technology Specialist<br>
Anthony Wayne Local Schools K-12<br><a href="mailto:aw_aca_bre@nwoca.org">aw_aca_bre@nwoca.org</a><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Thomas Larkin <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tlarki@kckps.org">tlarki@kckps.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">I have 5 buildings with about 900 to 1300 laptops in each of them. Each building has both a Mac mini and an Xserve. The Xserve is the main distribution point and also the netboot/imaging server for that building since we don't want to image over the WAN.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">We do have Mac Minis in the smaller computer labs and middles schools where there are less macs deployed, and they do work fine. You have to load OS X server on them though to get past the 10 client limit of AFP connections.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Overall, the Xserves make all the difference. At first we just had mac minis, now that we have both running and load balancing enabled I get policy pushed out notably faster. I also had my boss buy me the most top of the line Xserve last year for our JSS and it has 8gigs of RAM in it.</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Minis will work, but if you are unicasting policies to 1000s of laptops an xserve is much much better. Plus if you try to netboot/image off a Mac mini, forget about it. You'll be there for days imaging just a few machines. I have not tried multi casting with a Mini though, and I wonder how that would work out?</font> </p>
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<font face="Lucida Grande" size="3">Hope that helps</font> </p>
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<br>___________________________<br>Thomas Larkin<br>TIS Department<br>KCKPS USD500<br><a href="mailto:tlarki@kckps.org" target="_blank">tlarki@kckps.org</a><br>blackberry: 913-449-7589<br>office: 913-627-0351<br>
<br><br><br><br><br>>>> "DuCharme, Cynthia (ESC)" <DuCharmeC@District279.org> 06/04/09 11:27 AM >>><br> </p><div><div></div><div class="h5">
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Our district is currently beginning the process of migrating our imaging and software package need to Casper. I was wonder if any of the larger districts that are using this software have distribution points in the schools? If so what kind of hardware are you using? Has any one tried using the Mac Minis? Thanks for your input. </p>
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