Hardware recommendations for a dedicated PXE Serva or FOG server

[CampusTec]

Hello all, this is one of my first posts but I've been lurking for months and using the forum's very precious search features.

As my first thread, I want to talk about PXE. I managed to get parted magic, memtest86, and win8, 8.1, 7, to run from my test PXE server (Serva).

Would you recommend going with Windows/Serva or a linux pxe setup?

What minimum hardware specs do you recommend for cloning say, 12-24 systems at once? Can I just use a cheap old computer or should I go with higher end specs?

My network is composed of a Cisco 1941, two 3750x-24p switches and one 3750x-48p switch connected with fiber. So no worries there.

I'm pretty tech savvy, but some of my employees are not familiar with more advanced stuff and just stick to basic computer diagnostics. I need something stable so that I can have peace of mind when I'm not at the shop.

Thanks in advance for the replies!

 

[OaksLabs]

As my first thread, I want to talk about PXE. I managed to get parted magic, memtest86, and win8, 8.1, 7, to run from my test PXE server (Serva).

Would you recommend going with Windows/Serva or a linux pxe setup?

As a fan of PXE myself, I can tell you that it can be frustrating to try a hybrid Windows PXE boot menu and have the ability to boot linux utilities. I think FOG does most of what you're looking for, and I'd suggest setting that up first, and then moving to a more DIY PXE setup.

What minimum hardware specs do you recommend for cloning say, 12-24 systems at once? Can I just use a cheap old computer or should I go with higher end specs?

With imaging, this is an economy of scale question. If your images are 20GB each and you'd like to do 24 at a time, you are looking to move 480GB (or 491,520MB) of data. Now, what's the speed of your old PC? The original SATA standard (aka SATA 1.0) moves data at 150MB/s. With ~491,000 megs of data, (remember, this 150MB/s is split between 24 PC's, so ~6MB/s each) it would take 22 hours to move that amount of data, assuming maximum throughput, no other use of the SATA controler (which is impossible; some type of OS runs on all NAS devices).

On the flip side, a SATA 3.0 controller runs at 600MB/s, and you'd get ~25MB/s throughput per PC, and you could image those same 24 computers
in 5 hours.

NOTE: These calculations are assuming data transmission without Multicast. Multicast (similar in concept to bittorrent) will allow for much improved speeds.

 

[CampusTec]

Thanks for the reply Oaklabs!

By "old" computer I mean a 2011 Dell desktop computer with an i7, 8gb ram, and a really big hard drive (And sata 3.0 support).

I'm just wondering of the specifications of the server itself matter much or if it's all about the sata controller and network speed. In other words, for my purposes, would a cheap motherboard, intel i3, 4gb ram, Sata 3.0, 500GB hdd give me more or less the same performance as say an i7, 12gb ram, SSD?

To reuse crap that is sitting there doing nothing or to invest in a proper setup?

What kind of machine do you use for local PXE?

 

[OaksLabs]

I'd say that CPU/HDD/Network are your big ticket items wien working with PXE. I have two small tweaks in my network though. My PXE server is a VM, and I pull my OS images from a different storage device, not the PXE server itself. With that said I'm using pretty standard hardware (both my PXE server and network share are coming from a Dell PowerEdge server, and I'm not using all the RAM or CPU with just hose VM's (it's the other 7-10 VMs, lol).

The hardware you have sounds fine to me. I'd invest in enterprise HDDs (Western Digital RE3 or RE4 drives are my personal favorite). To answer your other question, you will see a boost in performance from a beefier system, but it might be manifested as more stability or fewer "random bugs." As a college student I'm doing work in some of the computer labs, and the enterprise equipment they use (vs what I use at my other, local repair shop job) is not only faster, but it is orders of magnitudes more stable.

 

[CampusTec]

I'd say that CPU/HDD/Network are your big ticket items wien working with PXE. I have two small tweaks in my network though. My PXE server is a VM, and I pull my OS images from a different storage device, not the PXE server itself. With that said I'm using pretty standard hardware (both my PXE server and network share are coming from a Dell PowerEdge server, and I'm not using all the RAM or CPU with just hose VM's (it's the other 7-10 VMs, lol).

The hardware you have sounds fine to me. I'd invest in enterprise HDDs (Western Digital RE3 or RE4 drives are my personal favorite). To answer your other question, you will see a boost in performance from a beefier system, but it might be manifested as more stability or fewer "random bugs." As a college student I'm doing work in some of the computer labs, and the enterprise equipment they use (vs what I use at my other, local repair shop job) is not only faster, but it is orders of magnitudes more stable.

I also st

I'd say that CPU/HDD/Network are your big ticket items wien working with PXE. I have two small tweaks in my network though. My PXE server is a VM, and I pull my OS images from a different storage device, not the PXE server itself. With that said I'm using pretty standard hardware (both my PXE server and network share are coming from a Dell PowerEdge server, and I'm not using all the RAM or CPU with just hose VM's (it's the other 7-10 VMs, lol).

The hardware you have sounds fine to me. I'd invest in enterprise HDDs (Western Digital RE3 or RE4 drives are my personal favorite). To answer your other question, you will see a boost in performance from a beefier system, but it might be manifested as more stability or fewer "random bugs." As a college student I'm doing work in some of the computer labs, and the enterprise equipment they use (vs what I use at my other, local repair shop job) is not only faster, but it is orders of magnitudes more stable.

That answers all my hardware questions thank you!

On a side note, I own the local university campus computer repair shop, which I started while I was a student, so it sounds like we're in a similar boat.

It sounds obvious to me now that I should only use a cheap box for testing and that I should get a decent enterprise class server and storage, not just for pxe but for other purposes.. I just figure that for the money, and seeing as I mostly use hosted VPS for my stuff, it didn't make sense to invest much just for a PXE server.

One last request, could you post your PXE VM's software specs? Which pxe server are you using? Which distro? Do you update your bootable utilities via ftp and scripts(to restart server)?

Once again, thanks a million!

 

[OaksLabs]

My system is a Windows 7 Professional VM, 1GB RAM, quad core @ 2.33GHz. I'm not doing OS deployments from this, it's just a utility boot menu based off of pxelinux that runs DBAN, memtest, and the NTPassword reset tool. For the life of me I can't find the link to the download page for this setup....but it's powered by TFTP32 (http://tftpd32.jounin.net/).

It's a really fickle setup if you try to modify it (it's been a royal pain to add ANYTHING to it), but for those 3 programs it's wonderful.