7.2. Multiple server setups

A separated home directory server, this is useful for large systems that might have heavy loaded home directories (over 200 users on one server). Since user home directories generate the most heavy I/O traffic on common Unix networks, it is likely home directories stored important data which need to be well managed and administered. Some systems might even need multiple home directory servers for load separation. You may consider purchase a network attach storage (NAS) which supports NFS for easier storage management, or you may setup separate NFS servers. You may edit the file /var/opt/aptus/mygroup/groupfs/etc/fstab.group to add mounts to other server or do this in Aptus Configurator. Add the line

OTHER otherserver:/home /home nfs defaults 0 0

Will make your group of Aptus clients to mount this file system on startup.

Here, Aptus server means the Linux server which is installed with Aptus, serving the root file system, managing network configurations of clients. The Aptus server need not to be serving the home directory at the same time, because clients can always mount to other servers to acquire the home directory.

If you client doesn't have a local hard drive, and local swap is disabled. You will put some load on to the swap server as well. By default, Aptus server will act as a Swap server, but you can specify the clients to use a separate swap server so that your Aptus server and home directory server doesn't get overloaded too much in case of many many diskless clients on the network. To use a different swap server, edit the lines in /var/opt/aptus/mygroup/groupfs/var/opt/aptusgroup.conf

SWAPSERVER=myswapserver.hostname.or.ip-address NETSWAP=/myswapserver/exportdir

This will cause the group of Aptus clients to swap to the specified NFS export. You have to make sure the swap server is configured to allow read-write to the specified export.