hardware/software requirements for a local Sage server

[D.C. Ernst]

I'm in the process of exploring the option of setting up a local Sage
server at my university. What are the minimum requirements in terms
of CPU, memory, hard drive disk space, operating system, etc.? I'm
sure the answers to these questions depend on numerous factors, but
I'm not exactly sure what those factors are. My dream is for my
department (mathematics at Plymouth State University) to have our very
own server that runs Sage, WebWork, and perhaps gets used in ways I
haven't thought of yet (maybe by our Numerical Analysis students?).
What would we need to make this a reality?

Thanks in advance.

Dana


Dana Ernst, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
Plymouth State University
MSC 29, 17 High Street
Plymouth, NH 03264-1595

Email: dce...@plymouth.edu
Web Page: http://oz.plymouth.edu/~dcernst
Office: Hyde 312

[William Stein]

On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 11:51 AM, D.C. Ernst <ernst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm in the process of exploring the option of setting up a local Sage
> server at my university.  What are the minimum requirements in terms
> of CPU, memory, hard drive disk space, operating system, etc.?  I'm
> sure the answers to these questions depend on numerous factors, but
> I'm not exactly sure what those factors are.  My dream is for my
> department (mathematics at Plymouth State University) to have our very
> own server that runs Sage, WebWork, and perhaps gets used in ways I
> haven't thought of yet (maybe by our Numerical Analysis students?).
> What would we need to make this a reality

8GB RAM and at least 4 cores. Get something that runs Linux well.

William

[Jason Grout]

How many students are you planning on supporting? (I mean simultaneous
Sage sessions, where each worksheet open counts as a Sage session).

I think I would budget about 80MB of RAM just for each open Sage
session. Add another 140MB or so for the Sage server, and another 500MB
or so for the operating system. Then add up what you need for WebWork,
etc. Then give yourself *plenty* of cushion (memory is relatively
cheap---I just looked it up for the Sage server we are setting up at
Drake, and for us, it's about $35/GB from Newegg).

Jason

[mhampton]

I run local servers on a 4-cpu computer with 4 GB, and it is fine for
smaller classes - but I doubt I've had more than 20 students using it
at once. 8GB would scale up a lot better if there might be several
classes at a time hitting it.

-Marshall Hampton

> William Stein wrote:

[Byungchul Cha]

This discussion is very relevant to me, as I am also in the process of
working with our IT people at my campus in order to set up a sage
server for my college.

My IT person suggests that I run a sage server in a virtual machine.
Are there any helpful tips in installing a sage server in a virtual
machine?

[jason...@creativetrax.com]

Byungchul Cha wrote:
> This discussion is very relevant to me, as I am also in the process of
> working with our IT people at my campus in order to set up a sage
> server for my college.
>
> My IT person suggests that I run a sage server in a virtual machine.
> Are there any helpful tips in installing a sage server in a virtual
> machine?
>

The "Windows" download *is* Sage installed in a virtual machine. Would
that do? All you have to do is download the Virtualbox image and run it
from Virtualbox.

-Jason

[Robert Bradshaw]

It should be noted that this same Virtualbox image works fine for non-
windows systems as well, and the public sage notebook server
sagenb.org is served from within a virtual machine as well. So yes, it
can and is being done.

- Robert

[Dana Ernst]

>> 8GB RAM and at least 4 cores. Get something that runs Linux well.
>
> How many students are you planning on supporting? (I mean simultaneous
> Sage sessions, where each worksheet open counts as a Sage session).

Initially, I think we would never have more than 25 sessions going at the same time. However, I'm hopeful that Sage will get used in more and more classes and that this number will increase over the next couple years.

> I think I would budget about 80MB of RAM just for each open Sage
> session. Add another 140MB or so for the Sage server, and another 500MB
> or so for the operating system. Then add up what you need for WebWork,
> etc. Then give yourself *plenty* of cushion (memory is relatively
> cheap---I just looked it up for the Sage server we are setting up at
> Drake, and for us, it's about $35/GB from Newegg).

Ignoring WebWork, etc. and assuming we plan for 25 simultaneous Sage sessions, anyone feel like taking a wild guess at how much a server would cost to meet Jason's suggested minimum requirements? I'm trying to get a sense for what I'm going to have to do to obtain one of these suckers...

Thanks!

Dana

[jason...@creativetrax.com]

For 25 simultaneous sessions, I'd have a minimum of 3GB of RAM *just*
for Sage (not counting operating system, WebWork, etc.). If you're
running Sage in a virtual machine (which makes it easy to clean things
up if people start getting malicious), then I'd go no less than 4GB for
the machine. 8GB would be a lot more comfortable and would leave room
for growth.

I think 1000-2000 (plus or minus a million dollars :) would buy a good
server with those requirements. But your IT guy is the expert there.

For Drake, we found an unused server in the computer science side of the
department. All I have to do is find/buy the RAM for it now. You might
ask around to see if there are any unused servers laying around.

Jason

[mhampton]

Quickly looking for something on Dell, I configured the following for
$1500. This is definitely NOT the best price possible for this sort
of machine, and I don't necessarily recommend Dell, I just wanted to
get a conservative ballpark estimate.

processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9650 with VT (3.0GHz, 12M, 1333MHz
FSB)
2 320 GB harddrives
memory: 8GB DDR2 Non-ECC SDRAM, 800MHz, (4DIMM)

Shopping around you could probably get a lot closer to $1000. The key
thing I think is to get a machine that can be upgraded to at least 8
GB of RAM, even if you don't buy that much initially. Although as
Jason pointed out, the memory is relatively cheap once you have a
board that can handle it.

A barebones quad-core Mac Pro with 3 GB RAM is $2500, but they are
very nice machines. The memory is 1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, which is a
little better than the Dell above, and can be upgraded to 16 GB. You
can buy 3rd party memory for the Mac Pro for much, much less than from
Apple.

-Marshall

[dimpase]

IMHO one should look at bit deeper into the underlying infrastructure.
It could well be that you do not need a full-blown server to handle
the project.
Asuming your students already have accounts on a Unix system, etc.
It could be that you can get away with the existing disk storage, and
just get more
CPU/RAM.
Just in case,
Dmitrii