Topic: Overloading E-Smith Server.

[Dave Aldridge]

Would the following setup overload the E-Smith Server:

Server setup as a gateway for 45 machines. I'm guessing about 50% useage at any given time
Web Server (low volume) and e-mail for 45 machines

Microsoft Office 97 served from an I-Bay supporting 30 Client Licences with each user having their own I-Bay. I am taking a guess that at any given time Office 97 useage is approx. 60% with 80% using MSWord.

Server is a Pentium 500/256MB/8.4GB on a DSL connection.

Dave

[Charlie Brady]

Dave Aldridge wrote:

> Would the following setup overload the E-Smith Server:
>
> Server setup as a gateway for 45 machines. I'm guessing about
> 50% useage at any given time Web Server (low volume) and
> e-mail for 45 machines
>
> Microsoft Office 97 served from an I-Bay supporting 30 Client
> Licences with each user having their own I-Bay. I am taking a
> guess that at any given time Office 97 useage is approx. 60%
> with 80% using MSWord.
>
> Server is a Pentium 500/256MB/8.4GB on a DSL connection.

If I understand correctly, you will be running Office programs from an i-bay, rather than a local drive. If so, then I would say that you will need to consider LAN saturation at times as a performance limiting factor. Consider using a switched LAN, and 100Mbit if the cost/performance is justified.

Your CPU and RAM will be more than adequate for server load. You can do a quick check of the server load from a shell prompt using the "w" command. A load average of 0.01 means roughly that the CPU is 99% idle.

Here's a snapshot of one of my machines, a 450MHz PII with 128MB RAM:

[charlieb@server charlieb]$ w
 12:30pm  up 8 days, 18:36,  1 user,  load average: 0.07, 0.04,  0.01

[charlieb@server charlieb]$ w
 12:33pm  up 8 days, 18:39,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
USER     TTY      FROM              LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT

...

It currently has 12 machines on the LAN, with 6 users currently logged on, and is mostly idle.

Charlie