Network Accounts vs Mobile Accounts vs Local Account

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Level 1

4 points

Network Accounts vs Mobile Accounts vs Local Account

Hi,

I have 100 Imac (3 labs) in a K12 school and I am using Network accounts. I had high AFP load on my server which has been corrected somewhat by installing NHR package (Fonts and Caches redirecting to local folder).

But...it takes long for the students to log in. I guess the server is taking some time to move the fonts folder from the server every Imac.

We are planning to buy 10 macbooks (mobile lab) and more later on. That might increase considerably the wireless network traffic.

What is the best global solution since I can't setup a network and mobile account for the same student.

1. Switch all the network accounts to mobile accounts and force the students to use the same Imac or macbook everytime?
2. Don't change anything hoping the wireless network will do the job?
3. Setup a local guest account (Imac or/and macbooks) and teach the students how to connect to the server so they can backup their documents?

Any ideas or recommendations?

OS X Server, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 28, 2010 12:29 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 28, 2010 11:20 PM in response to Speamac

Using WiFi all clients use "one shared channel" (or two if both 2,4GHz and 5 GHz are used simulatenously - if router is capable) / basestations/AP compared to using a switched ethernet with one port each and maybe (dual/trunked) gigabit between switch and server. Achieved WiFi speed depends on distance machine <--> AP.

You can use an external portable account on a (big enough) USB stick or an external disk for each user, which syncs to the server (or not).

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Answer 2

Mar 29, 2010 11:47 AM in response to Leif Carlsson

We have not found Mac login times acceptable for student network accounts over wireless.

Network Mac login typically involves a prodigious amount of data transfer. This is exacerbated when students leave many files open on the desktop or in the downloads folder.

We pulled 1Gb ethernet for all our student machines. We also set up a Mac server and used Workgroup Management to redirect selected folders. Even so we do not enjoy consistently good login times.

If I needed to support shared access to wireless Mac laptops I would assign students to specific machines with local accounts and teach them how to backup their documents to a network server.

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Answer 3

Speamac Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 30, 2010 5:59 AM in response to Leif Carlsson

An external disk for every user would cost a lot! 1400 users! But of course it could have something great for 30 users.

Unfortunately, I don't have permissions to configure the WIFI. Thanks for the idea.

When I look at the graphs in Server admin, I realized that main problem is the CPU load. It reaches 100% for 10 minutes when 60 users are log in at the same time. The Bandwidth traffic reaches 6 MB/s peak for about 1 minutes. That would be fair to say that the present problem is the lack of CPU Power.

I am still trying to find solution reduce the AFP load. NHR package was a good step. Next step is to reduce the number of WGM settings. I got rid of the Group and user account settings and switched to computer settings. I red it will reduce the log in time.

Thanks anyway

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2010 7:26 AM in response to Speamac

You don't say what server you have but even a G5 machine should be able to deliver about 9-10MB/s on a 100 Mbit switch and 40-50 MB/s on a gigabit switch. But I guess reading mutiple small files for each account slows things down.

What kind of diskspeed (read/write) do you have locally on the server?

A single wireless connection would be "painful" to use if multiple user simultaneously log in to their network homes.

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Answer 5

Speamac Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 4, 2010 7:59 AM in response to Leif Carlsson

hi,

look at my HDD benchmark result. Can you tell if the Xbench result makes sense?

we have a Mac PRO:
*CPU : 2 x Dual-Core Intel Xeon
*Memory : 5GB
*2nd HDD for Network account: 7200RPM, SATA 3Gb/s, Seek Time:8.5ms, 16MB Buffer

Xbench HDD test result :
Sequential
Uncached Write 94.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 83.08 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 24.51 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 87.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
_Random _
Uncached Write 0.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 28.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 0.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 27.95 MB/sec [256K blocks]

All the Imacs are link to 100 Mbit switches and the server is on a 1Gbit port.

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