I'm planning to run a thin-client server using pxes on fedora core 4 that will service around 30-60 computers. I'm planning to use a quad core processor with the following specs:

AMD Opteron 2350 / INTEL Xeon E5405
8GB(4x2GB) 667MHz DDR2
PERC 6/i Integrated/SAS6iR Controller (RAID 0 config)
2x146GB 15K rpm SAS 3Gbps Hot plug HDD
Dual Embedded Broadcom® NetXtreme II 5708 Gigabit Ethernet NIC

Fedora Core 4 is the only OS I know that supports pxes. I've attempted using pxes with later versions of FC but it's not supported and is not possible. My concern here is with regards to the hardware compatibility and also if I'm using too much hardware for this OS.

Have you checked RHEL/Centos. FC4 is way paste EOL(by several years) and I doubt it will have sas support. With 8GB of ram you are really going to want to use the 64bit version(should work with that new of Xeon) of whatever version/distro you choose.

Since pxes has gone proprietary have you considered going with cult (its replacement) instead?

I've tried looking for tutorials on how to install cult but I can't seem to find any. Where can I find one? Can you please provide me links?

By the way, we're planning to run java on this system.

Thank you.

There is there sourceforge page. There is a forum there for cult specific questions. I am not using the package.