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I really dont know what category to stick this under, but I do remember quite a few people in the networking section having some experiance with this type of thing. This may sound like its rambling, but bear with me on this one.
My younger brother is considering a career in computers/networking, and for the upcoming school year (high school) is required to do some kind of project. The guidelines are fairly loose, its more about seeing if the student can do research and put together a presentation.
Considering that he might want to go into a career dealing with network administration, I was suggesting setting up a linux box or two, running something like Xen or Vmware server, alongside some cisco hardware such as a 2500 router. My idea behind this was, to set up a few dozeen possible scenarios under various distros, all on one box. What for? To have a setup close to a real scenario, that might be seen in real-life.
Ive been using vmware for about a year, and xen for a few weeks to things similar to this, but more toward figuring out ideal setups for my webhosting. For example, ive installed Ubuntu, Solaris, Freebsd, Slackware, and Centos all with the exact same copies of the website/mysql databases, and from there I was able to try out things like loadbalancing, or try and figure out the best way to make things a bit more reliable by having a back-up mysql server, etc. This was all done on a K8, 3000+ A64 with 1GB ram, and 4NICs. a few P3/P2 computers connected to each NIC, some acting like a router or some just used as a client to benchmark. Vmware was fairly easy to work with, since i could pause/unpause virtual machines within seconds, move them from PC to PC without having any issues, and it can be managed from http, or using the vmware console across the network.
Used cisco switches, and used cisco routers are fairly cheap on ebay. a 2U box with an older socket-939 athlon, dual core, wouldnt cost more than $300 and could easily be sold if it wasnt needed anymore. Linux is free, Vmware server for linux is free, xen is free... What im trying to ask, does anyone here who has some kind of career involving network administration, feel this might be a project worth the time and money, as far as helping with education?
Any other suggestions or comments would be apreciated, as Im not entirely sure what direction to take.
My younger brother is considering a career in computers/networking, and for the upcoming school year (high school) is required to do some kind of project. The guidelines are fairly loose, its more about seeing if the student can do research and put together a presentation.
Considering that he might want to go into a career dealing with network administration, I was suggesting setting up a linux box or two, running something like Xen or Vmware server, alongside some cisco hardware such as a 2500 router. My idea behind this was, to set up a few dozeen possible scenarios under various distros, all on one box. What for? To have a setup close to a real scenario, that might be seen in real-life.
Ive been using vmware for about a year, and xen for a few weeks to things similar to this, but more toward figuring out ideal setups for my webhosting. For example, ive installed Ubuntu, Solaris, Freebsd, Slackware, and Centos all with the exact same copies of the website/mysql databases, and from there I was able to try out things like loadbalancing, or try and figure out the best way to make things a bit more reliable by having a back-up mysql server, etc. This was all done on a K8, 3000+ A64 with 1GB ram, and 4NICs. a few P3/P2 computers connected to each NIC, some acting like a router or some just used as a client to benchmark. Vmware was fairly easy to work with, since i could pause/unpause virtual machines within seconds, move them from PC to PC without having any issues, and it can be managed from http, or using the vmware console across the network.
Used cisco switches, and used cisco routers are fairly cheap on ebay. a 2U box with an older socket-939 athlon, dual core, wouldnt cost more than $300 and could easily be sold if it wasnt needed anymore. Linux is free, Vmware server for linux is free, xen is free... What im trying to ask, does anyone here who has some kind of career involving network administration, feel this might be a project worth the time and money, as far as helping with education?
Any other suggestions or comments would be apreciated, as Im not entirely sure what direction to take.