Low-cost multi-user Linux terminal server?

[Brian Kelsay]

>>> "Brian Densmore" <> 07/13/04 11:19AM >>>

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jason Clinton 
>> 
>> webgiant at juno.com wrote:
>> 
>> ... on a 100mb network. In surplus of 50 users, you're talking 
>> some fairly 
>> behemoth hardware and gigabit backbones to 100Mbit hubs...
>> 
>Rather than using behemoth hardware, what about a "load-balancing"
>server situation. Something sort of like network load-balancing. You
>would need some kind of monitoring system, so that no one server would
>get more connections than it could handle comfortably. 
>
>Something like this (pardon my poor graphics):
><graphics deleted>
>
>I could see a need for possibly multiple load balancers, setup
>as a cluster. Or possibly to make the server farm a cluster and
>forego the load balancer, which would be built into a cluster.
>
>My vision of the load balancer though is that it would be much more
>simple than a cluster. As all it would have to do is: have a table
>that lists all the servers with a number of max clients, keep a
>running tally of current clients, and direct traffic from the client
>to the proper server. Basically it would be an ip-forwarder that keeps 
>count. I don't know maybe this is a stupid idea.

Not so stupid after all, but it wouldn't have to be a separate box controlling the connections to 
the balanced servers, just one server has to be in control with a monitoring program.  Master node 
receives request for connection, checks # of concurrent connections to all avail. servers, request 
gets assigned to server with least # of connections.  I leave the details of how to do it to you.  
I'm not the programmer here.

There was a cool article in Linux Journal about a load balancing setup for a University (think it 
was in Canada).  They did use a separate server to distribute the load and had separate IMAP server 
to authinticate as well as backup IMAP server.  The diagrams in the magazine explained it better 
than I could.  The setup was genius.   Way more complicated than balancing ltsp connections need to 
be, but very informative none the less.

Brian Kelsay