I'm a final year diploma student in cse and i'm trying to make and implement an infrastructure which would serve as file server, web server, mail server, news server, database server on old systems on linux-ubuntu based platform.We'l be making an cluster on linux system and would be integrating our servers on the same.We'l make this cluster highly available and secured as well.

The purpose of doing this thing is to provide the same services at a much cheaper rate using open source and a proper infrastructure.
It would be very helpful for our project if we get some inputs from here...

What kind of "inputs" are you looking for, exactly?

Your conclusion is correct, you will certainly save money by using open source software over paid commercial software; where you looking for something more specific than a vindication of your theory?

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The very 1st step of our project is to first build a good architecture.i.e how would the cluster actually be implemented.For that i'l like to know the answers to the following questions:-
The servers which are mainly setup In the industry ?
What is the architecture like ?
What is the workload each server handles ?
H/w configuration of server?
Is implentation of the clustering efficient?
Estimated cost, which is spent on the servers?
What are the basic requirements in the industry as far as servers are concerned?



After researching a bit i taught something of this-
1.I'l have 2-3 pc's on which all servers would be clustered.
2.There'l be one pc which would manage the whole cluster,for convience say it management node-which would manage the whole cluster and do the load-balancing and everything.
This is totally imaginary till now.Pls suggest if this fisible.

I have started researching on this stuff and came to know about this haproxy load balancer and as an experiment implemeneted webserver clustering - using haproxy as a load-balancer and two backend apache servers.

I researched a quite bit and then came to know about this Kerrighed cluster. Would it be of any use and fisible if i build a Kerrighed cluster and deploy these services on them. Any i/p would be helpful for the project.