I am trying to setup a small network of VM's to test out a few things and i have a few questions. I am coming from a Windows background and from that you usually have a primary server and then a bunch of other servers that connect to it. So if i have a database server or a web server they all connect to the primary and a nice little network is formed. Is this how linux also handles small networks or does it work differently? I want to create a small network that would simulate a small office network with various services and servers running but i cant fugire out the "primary" piece to get all of these connected together. Any ideas?
Thanks,
--Nick

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by "primary" server? Are you referring to a common login point for all the clients? Samba can accomplish this. If they're all linux boxes, then you'd want to probably use NIS instead. http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...samba-pdc.html

What services will you be running?

What are the functions of the 'primary'? When your servers are on the same subnet they can communicate directly with each other so unless 'primary' carries out a certain function (e.g. authentication), then it's superfluous.

By primary i just meant all ather machines connect to it and it carries out things like login, ip addresses, etc... Coming from a windows background you have a primary server and then as you add new machines to the network they are pointed to this primary server. It looks like i may not need to worry about this is if i setup the subnet correctly.

My main goal right now is a mongodb cluster which i have working in windows but would much rather have it running in linux.

Mongodb seems to have native linux versions:
http://www.mongodb.org/downloads

Building tutorial for Linux:
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building+for+Linux