R12 on two Laptops
So we have installed R12 on a external USB hard disk according to my instructions but now we want more performance and flexibility?
You can either run out and buy a huge server and re-install on that or try to use two laptops instead of one?
Equipment used:
- Router – Draytek 2820
- Laptop 1 – R12 server: Lenovo Edge 13 with AMD Turion Neo X2 CPU and 4Gb RAM
- Laptop 2 – Client: Dell XPS M1530 with Intel T8300 CPU and 6Gb RAM
- Hard disk – R12 disk: Akasa eSata/USB2.0 case with Seagate 500Gb 7200RPM
Follow this to make it work:
- In the router set a static IP address for laptop 1 – I use 192.168.1.4
- Connect the hard disk to laptop 1 and boot
- So laptop 1 still thinks it is 127.0.0.1 but router makes it 192.168.1.4 for other computers
- Start R12 on laptop 1 and ensure everything is up and running nicely
- Update hosts file on laptop 2:
192.168.1.4 localhost.localdomain
Localhost is normally the loopback but as the R12 server is using this name we must do the same - In the browser on laptop 2 connect to http://localhost.localdomain:8000
- Login and go!
Conclusion
R12 Performance is fine only taking 1.7Gb RAM on Laptop 1.
Cpu level is very low as well < 25% overall.
I/O could be better as the USB2 is not that fast.
Fitting the R12 hard disk inside Laptop 1 may boot performance thanks to Sata being 10+ times faster than USB2.