FOG Server CPU Requirements

[ty900000]

@george1421

Which one sucks? The 20MB/min or the 6GB/min? Or both?

[Tom Elliott]

@ty900000 The 20MB a minute.

[ty900000]

@Tom-Elliott

Ah, yeah. It was going to take over 13 hours to blow down a 17GB image. I think it’s the crappy L2 Dell switches can’t handle … much of anything. It’s a constant battle with them.

[Tom Elliott]

@ty900000 Are the switches you have capable to be “managed”.

[ty900000]

@Tom-Elliott

Yeah, they can be managed. But, I can’t do much with them. Their documentation isn’t great and the are seriously lacking commands. I’m a CCNA, so I’m a little more used to Cisco-specific commands that do Cisco-specific things. These old PowerConnects either don’t have an equivalent or just have a very different and more difficult way of doing the same thing.

[george1421]

@ty900000 said in FOG Server CPU Requirements:

20MB/min

I would expect a single unicast image to deploy about 6GB/m on a typical solid network. 4 to 5GB/m for a multicast.

You are multicasting to devices on the same vlan as the fog server?

[ty900000]

@george1421

Cool! Yeah, I was hoping to see 4-5 GB/min. We don’t have VLANs. Not yet, at least. The Dell PowerConnect switches are old and we only use them as a L2 switch for now. They can be managed, but they lack a lot of commands and documentation. Cisco Catalysts should be coming next quarter, I hope.

[Tom Elliott]

@ty900000 If they’re used as “dummy” switches, maybe replacing them with simplified dummy switches (with GB if possible) would help improve things?

[ty900000]

@Tom-Elliott

No, they’re not “dummy” switches. They are the whole entire network backbone, sadly. They’re so old when I unplugged one that hadn’t been turned off in years and plugged it back in, it was completely dead.

[Junkhacker]

@george1421 said in FOG Server CPU Requirements:

I would expect a single unicast image to deploy about 6GB/m on a typical solid network.

is a typical network really that slow?

[Tom Elliott]

@Junkhacker Your network is fairly special man, yes that’s about average lol.

[george1421]

@Junkhacker said in FOG Server CPU Requirements:

@george1421 said in FOG Server CPU Requirements:

I would expect a single unicast image to deploy about 6GB/m on a typical solid network.

is a typical network really that slow?

Yes I still have network envy of your setup. But not everyone has all gold and chrome computers either.

[george1421]

@ty900000 I there any chance you could setup a “test” network switch to just the fog server and a few test systems to compare the multicast to unicast to. If you are multicasting across your campus you may have other underlying issues that mutlicasting is making worse (like a 100Mb link somewhere). At least using all on switch backbone you could get a better idea of speeds.

[Junkhacker]

@george1421 i don’t think my setup is really that special. it’s a gigabit network with dell clients and a used Poweredge R510 we picked up cheap for the server (perc H700 raid controller with a 24 drive array, which is probably why i have the nice speed, tbh)

[Tom Elliott]

@Junkhacker It also doesn’t hurt that many of your “receiving” systems have SSD’s lol.

[Junkhacker]

@Tom-Elliott true, forgot about that. we only deploy traditional hard drives in special cases now. we find it’s more effective for us to put in an SSD than a faster processor for our users.

point being, if someone had relatively small image storage requirements they could probably get as fast of results as i do by putting an SSD in their server.

[george1421]

@Junkhacker said in FOG Server CPU Requirements:

if someone had relatively small image storage requirements they could probably get as fast of results as i do by putting an SSD in their server.

Like possibly an i3 intel nuc with a 512GB ssd drive?? It makes a really swell mobile deployment server.

[ty900000]

@george1421

Honestly, not really. I do have some 11 year old Catalysts I could configure, but my clients would have no DHCP server to pull PXE settings from. I’d have to create a new FOG server acting as DHCP, first.

I might do that in the near future before we update our networking infrastructure.

[george1421]

@ty900000 not exactly what I was suggesting. Plug your fog server into switch, and target computers into switch, then plug deployment switch into building switch. What we want to do is isolate (as much as possible) muticast traffic to the single switch. I realize depending on the deployment switch settings it may send the multicast to your business network too, but as long as there are no multicast subscribers out there deployment speed shouldn’t be impacted. Understand this is only a test to see if your current kit can achieve the speeds you need. And then to feel confident that once you purge this legacy hardware your network will be capable of what you need.

-Or- just wait for your capex project replace the crud and start debugging from there.

[ty900000]

@george1421

Gotcha! Yeah, I’ll give that a shot in the morning and reply back here. Thanks for the idea and advice! I appreciate it a lot!