ok thanks for the clarification, I wasn't trying to sound like an ass in my previous message. I just know at my employer I've had users who think they know how to fix computers (but all they can do is break them) do more harm then good, but since we went to roaming profiles/active directory/etc a few years ago when I started steering the ship, I and made them all regular users and only IT support staff are administrators, that ended the problems. Xen is always good for saving power. It's similar to VMWare, you can run multiple virtual computers on one PC at once. So you could create yourself a Linux server on an already existing computer. Some of VMware's products are free, like ESX server, too, so you might look into that. Does each school have a firewall at their perimeter? Are they networked together via a VPN, or wide area network? Is your bandwidth billed by the gigabyte or unlimited, and how fast are the school's connections and # of computers? You could put your file server in a DMZ on your firewall and have all school computers update from it (but that may not be a good idea depending on how much bandwidth and computers your schools have and how much you are billed for bandwidth, or do it only at schools with no server). But you could keep your current setup and just have the remote servers grab the latest config and packages with ssh+rsync. Chris Wilcox wrote: > > > > > I'm the ICT Manager employed by the schools directly and contact > with the LA is often slow hence I figured I'd try to work with the > existing setup rather than ask them to change things across 15 > schools. > > I could simply set up a NAS or an additional Linux server (which > one or two schools have had though I've phased these out over more > energy efficient Buffalo NAS's over the past 12 months) but in the > interests of saving money and power I was looking to utilise > existing equipment rather than duplicate things. > > I have a test wpkg server/client at my main site which I use for > package development and testing and where in use, I can then take > the completed packages and XML files to each remote school (or in > some cases use remote access to download and install them without > travelling). It's the schools who have no NAS or existing > 'server' that I have implemented who I am trying to save a bit of > money for, and it looks like I'll have to ask the LA to see if > they'll arrange or let me know how to add an open share to the > Linux cache/firewall. > > In case you're interested! > > Chris > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Windows Live Messenger just got better. Find out more! > <http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/134665230/direct/01/> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > wpkg-users mailing list archives >> http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/ > _______________________________________________ > wpkg-users mailing list > wpkg-users at lists.wpkg.org > http://lists.wpkg.org/mailman/listinfo/wpkg-users > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.wpkg.org/pipermail/wpkg-users/attachments/20090421/aadc7fd0/attachment.html> |