Minimal system requirements for NethServer

When I look up the minimal system requirements for NethServer I find this in the official documentation:
For NS 6.x: Installation — NethServer 7 Final

Minimum requirements
Minimum requirements are:
64 bit CPU (x86_64)1 GB of RAM8 GB of disk space

And for NS 7RC: http://docs.nethserver.org/en/v7rc/installation.html#minimum-requirements

Minimum requirements
Minimum requirements are:
64 bit CPU (x86_64)1 GB of RAM 10 GB of disk space

To me this seems a bit too simple. I would like to discuss a more practicable approach with a few scenario’s depending on installed modules and amount of (concurrent) users.

For this I need you all to chip in to define these scenario’s and share your experience with resource usage.
What scenario’s should we address to get a good idea how to size a server.

What I can come up with:
Home use: up to 5 users with mostly wireless devices (1 laptop + 1 mobile phone per user) 2 or more Networked TV’s, 1 or more game consoles. Typical use: Account provider, Gateway/Firewall/IDS, Fileserver, Printserver, Backup…?

SoHo use: up to 10 users: 10 pc’s/laptops, 10 smartphones, Account provider, Gateway/Firewall/IDS, webserver, fileserver, mailserver, Printserver, Backup (+push to encrypted cloud), UPS connection,

SME: Company of 10 - 100 users: Account provider, Gateway/IDS/Firewall/Proxy, Wwebserver, Mailserver, Printserver + management, Backup, offsite Backup, Backup to encrypted cloud, UPS, use multiple servers?

School up to 500 students: Accountprovider (Samba4 AD), fileserver, mailserver, Gateway/IDS/Proxy/Firewall, ELO (Moodle), Prinserver + management, use multiple servers?

Any other scenario’s or additions to these above?
It would be perfect if you could give (anonymized) info about your servers and share them so we can come up with hands-on system requirements.

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Great topic, thanks man :blush:
I opened a discussion very similar times ago, it would be awesome extract some data from there!
People like @jgjimenezs @maxbet @cronopio @a4rgl @petralemoisson @pierre_bourdin @AZChas @alexcsilva can help us to add more REAL scenarios

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This is the minimum hardware configuration of my client, and it is stable.

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Thanks for sharing Jose. So if I understand ok, this server is configured as DC and account provider and doing DNS and DHCP. Are there any other services on that LAN (provided by other servers)?
I am curious about long(er) term statistics about system load (memory and CPU)

They shut down the server and nethserver at the end of the working day.

  • DHCP

  • DNS

  • MULTIWAN

  • FIREWALL

  • VLAN

  • PROXY

  • ZONES

  • DDNS

  • DC coming soon

And a server 2011 Microsoft

Well, our configuration is for sure an overkill :

Storage :

  • 2 x 200GB SSD (OS & VM)

  • 4 x 2TB SAS 7.2K (Raid 6 - DATA)

At the moment the server is running Nethserver 6.8 and it is used as file server, domain controller and mail server for our small office.

With 15 users it hardly break a sweat :

HW is oversized as we are planning to add a CRM system and related SQL DB.

Maybe after we will migrate to NS 7…

Massimo

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Nice setup @maxbet Is this the onlye physical server in the company? What is your disaster recovery plan in case of hardware failure? (for instance when your motherboard dies)

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Hi,

What is your disaster recovery plan in case of hardware failure? (for instance when your motherboard dies)

May be this:

http://images.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.angelfire.com%2Fmb%2Famandx%2Fimages%2FKeyer.gif&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.angelfire.com%2Fmb%2Famandx%2Fmorse.html&h=199&w=200&tbnid=ai_2ICx-j8s-uM%3A&vet=1&docid=eoOwZvNOewJDqM&ei=0e5PWPb6KcbWU_q8srgJ&tbm=isch&client=firefox-b&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=913&page=0&start=0&ndsp=41&ved=0ahUKEwi2p9zumvHQAhVG6xQKHXqeDJcQMwgnKA0wDQ&bih=940&biw=1920

Regards

Uwe

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Rob,
we have a service contract with Dell : 4 hours onsite (24/7/365). In short : they will come and fix it within 4 hours from our call.
We used it for our previous server and it worked…

We currently have 3 severs in the office :

  • The one running Nethserver and shown in the photo.

  • The backup server (HP Microserver Gen 8) running FreeNAS : this is our online backup for Nethserver (NFS share) and is also used to store seldom used data (on a FTP share).

  • Our old server which has been replaced by NS6.8 . This is a PowerEdge R200 running SBS2008 which could be easily re purposed to run NS 6.8 if needed.

We also have few old workstations which could run NS (extreme cases) : after all we had a test run of NS 6.8 with a simple PC (Core Q6600 - 8 GB Ram - 160 GB HD)

Massimo

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This our configuration, SME with about 20 employees.
Used as gateway with webfilter, fileserver, backup (urbackup), SOGo-groupecalenders and testing-VMs.
24 GB RAM, Raid 5 with 4 x 500 GB + 1 spare
NS 6.8

Second server is a IBM Power S814 aka ‘AS400’.

Original topic was minimal system requirements, so back to discussion.
This is my home server. Main services are: file server, cloud, mail.
I’m thinking of adding sound server role.
Machine was running with 2GB ram, but recently got upgraded to 6GB.

The original topic was that the minimal system requirements are not very clear what you actualy need for a practical situation. Therefor I started this discussion, so we can gather information of live servers and how they are running.
I think a practical option would be to divide the hardware requirements into segments. Maybe even on a per module basis in sets of amount of users. For instance up to 10 users, 10 - 50 users, 50 - 100 users, 100 - 250 users etc…
If we can fill in a matrix what amount of memory/diskspace/cpu cycles is needed as a minimum and recommended amount, then we can scale our servers much more efficient.

@robb is true, you have to group services or scenarios as you indicate not to give false expectation to the end user for what you want to run in your project with NethServer

I’d like to see a valuable blog post about this, you have already gathered much information. Do you have some time? So we can start to take this raw material and refine that into practical guides!

Please take a look also to official upstream doc (for 7.3):

Not sure if this is relevant to v7, we have Nethserver 6.8 deployed at all our sites.

In the main office;
Used as gateway, email server, printing, VPN, LAN services (dhcp and dns) file sharing. Wordpress installed as an internal site for Technical documentation. About 15 desktops, mixed Windows and Mint.

At our remote station locations;
between 5-15 desktops (both Windows and Linux Mint), email, file sharing, printing, and LAN services (dhcp, dns). There is also VPN for remote access.

Most hardware is Dell rackmount, (some 1850s and a few 2850s) with minimum 4 Gb memory up to maximum of 16Gb memory. Even though there is a big difference in the memory size, no noticeable difference in the performance.

For our requirements ( < 15 users ), Nethserver meets our performance and reliability needs.

Hope this helps.

4 Likes

Such a great scenario! Thanks for sharing Rich.
How many remote station locations to do you have?

The main office (and our NOC) is in southern England and our remote sites are;
2 in London
1 in Paris
and 1 in Victoria Falls, Africa.

All report back to the NOC, where I am located.

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Nice, a multi office environment. Can you tell a bit more on the specs of your servers and what version of NS they use? What is the type of business you run? (out of personal interest because Africa is kind of close to me since I have been to Senegal to install a network for a secondary school.)

Our servers are Dell 1850s and 2850s with between 4Gb and 16Gb memory, except for the main office, which is based on a ASUS mainboard ( https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5EVM_HDMI/) with only 4Gb memory and was ‘assembled’ by me earlier this year specifically to test NS.

It was intended only to be an in-house test for Nethserver before we decided to replace our ageing Dell D600sc that was running Win SBS2003, but was so good we migrated to Nethserver v6.8 within a month. I will be moving to NS v7 very soon, probably early next year and should really replace it with a dedicated server.

Our Business: We install and operate WiFi hotspots, Voip telephony and back office interfacing for major Hotel and chained-brand hospitality groups. Our systems take the guest’s booking information and use it to allocate a personalised WiFi login, activate the telephone service in the guest rooms, (and sometimes the AirCon temperature settings they prefer!) and return that data back to the management/reception for billing.

We use NS for business admin, emails, but mainly for Tech Support to store/retrieve drawings, plans, installation photographs, and job tickets. The locations are where our Support Teams are because of the number of customers in that geographic area/country.

I am looking forward to deploying NS v7 because it will help us with the integrations of IM and Voip (Asterisk) when communicating with our Tech Support staff.

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