[wplug] Starting From Scratch

[Florin Manolache]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007, Michael H. Semcheski wrote:

> a) I'm not designing any applications for this research group.  Just getting
> them setup with an environment.  This will involve buying some machines and
> installing applications.  But its not something I can spend all, or even a
> majority of my time over a few months on.  Its a side project.  I can put in
> big chunks of time, but I can't sustain that.

The computing environment is as good as the sysadmin, right?
Find the long term sysadmins for the group, and set up the environment 
such that they are familiar with it.

If there will be no dedicated sysadmin, its better to let them use whatever 
they run at home, so they can do at least basic maintenance.
Otherwise they will bug/blame you all the time and nobody will be happy.

I supported lots of such groups for many years, and the basic secrets 
(mentioned before in the thread) for a good environment are: 
keep it simple, uniform, scalable, and redundant, with long upgrade 
cycles. 
The implementation differs based on the available time and experience of 
the sysadmin. 

My preferred paradigm for groups like that, which works for years with a 
very low level of maintenance (implementation varies by group needs):

* one dedicated fileserver/mailserver, one dedicated webserver, one 
dedicated backup/admin server, workstations for each user, parallel 
cluster if needed.

* software: openSUSE - has the most scientific/office/multimedia software 
already compiled and easily available from a very small number of sources,
has a long and consistent maintenance cycle.

* installation/administration: disk cloning, "official" updates, a set of 
scripts doing automatic targeted patches.

* filesystem: the fileserver exports the home dirs via NFS to the parallel 
cluster  and to the workstations, the workstations have local home dirs 
(for speed)  and access  to the home dir on the fileserver via automount 
(for easy file transfer). 

* backup: home dirs, spools, and /etc daily via a set of scripts.

* hardware: white boxes with no OS from companies that provide lots of 
configuration options so the hardware works flawlessly with Linux and can 
be easily upgraded while recycling as much as possible.

Florin