A Large-scale PC Environment for Research and Education Based on Netboot Thin Clients

ABSTRACT

Fukuoka University provides more than 1,000 PCs in 20 PC rooms for education and research. In our setup, it is important to keep all PCs clean and in uniform condition within the short break time between classes to reduce maintenance costs. In order to achieve these goals, over the past 9 years, we have implemented NetBoot thin clients and have been appropriately adjusting the setup. In the current system, the clients boot image is stored in high-speed storage on SSD and is transferred via the high-speed campus network. This system, enables centralization of all necessary hardware resources for NetBoot in a single location and optimizes hardware resources and management methods. As a result, when all PCs are booted at once, we can control the PCs boot time to within 90 seconds. In this paper, we will describe the system configuration, the management methods of disk image files, performance evaluation and operation experiences.

References

1. M.Okumura and S.Fujimura. Construction and operation of diskless pc system of scale that exceeds 1000(in japanese). IPSJ SIG Technical Reports, (23):61--66, March 2008.

Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

    • Distributed architectures

      • Client-server architectures

• Information systems

  • Data management systems

    • Middleware for databases

      • Application servers

      • Database web servers