Build FOG on 32 vs 64 bit os
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So, now that Ubuntu 12.04 is out, and has been for a couple months, i’m starting to look at making the jump to 12.04. Now the fun question, is there really any advantage to using 64 over 32 bit Ubuntu? My test box I have setup for FOG is running 10.04 LTS 64 bit, however, our production server (which has quite a bit more power) is only running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32 bit. Does anyone prefer either architecture to another? If we switch to a 64 bit OS, will there be any noticeable difference to imaging either to upload or download?
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As far as I understand it, it’s really a matter of how your system is configured and used. 64 bit gives you access to RAM above 4GB (3.something if you want to get really technical), which is useful when you’re decompressing images, which only happens on the server when you’re multicasting from that server. But multicasting is generally bottlenecked by the write speed on the disks of the hosts you’re multicasting to or the network speed. So overall it’s really specific to your configuration and how you use it; is your server doing things that require a lot of memory? Personally I haven’t noticed a difference in the performance of FOG, but I also haven’t been looking for it.
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Well, we don’t use FOG for much besides imaging. I really am the only one to administer it at this point, and keep the server up to date. So we really only use it to image machines using the bypass, and to boot recovery tools and various iso files. However, we are going to start deploying laptops with SSD’s installed. So it’s possible that that 64 could make a difference, I assume, when we increase write speeds with the SSD, but it’s still an unknown. Our server is very high-end, even though FOG is running VMware ESX. We are just trying to achieve the highest speeds possible due to the volume of computers we need to setup with an initial image, or re-image. We’ve discussed trunking ports on the server to try and double the bandwidth to FOG. As it stands, we can image a machine with a 10 GB image in 3 minutes 45 seconds. The problem comes when we need to image 500+ computers. Multicasting proves to be to slow in the terms of hours to image the machines, so we stick with unicasting. But I think I might just have to setup a test server on 64bit for a while and see what kinds of results I can get.
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while i’m thinking about it, is there a way to find your config during the initial setup of FOG? It sure would be trying to track down all the IP’s used for setting it up if you can just pull up your initial config.