How to competently make an Internet cafe model on a diskless launch of clients?

Question

Debian

Hello.
To begin with, in *nix I am almost a complete 0 and each new command is accompanied by a Google search, but the systems seem to me more stable and flexible compared to win. Plus, they are free)
Now I want to experiment for the sake of and for my training in Oracle VM to make an Internet cafe model with a target server of the following configuration (which will later come to life on real hardware):
1. 3xHdd soft raid5;
2. 1xHdd for the system (in the future, the system will live on a usb 3.0 flash drive);
3. 1xHdd for backups and shares.
Diskless clients (from 10 to 100) will connect to the server via gigabit switches via tftp and download the win8.1x64 image via the iPXE script.
Questions:
1. What system for the server to choose? Debian or OpenSolaris?
2. Are there any peculiarities in the interaction of clients on win and target on *nix?
3. If there will be heterogeneous data on the raid and, in the vast majority of cases, read operations will occur, then what tweaks to maximize speed, like choosing an elevator, block size, mount parameters, can you advise?
4. What inexpensive gigabit switch can you recommend for stable and fast operation of such a network, so that, say, 50 clients can download some heavy software from the server (games, other resource-intensive applications)?
5. What constructive advice would you like to read/watch? Because now I am collecting information piece by piece, mainly on Habré =)
03/05/2018
For the time being, I have abandoned the idea of ​​doing something on Linux, because deep knowledge of this system is needed, to understand lvm, dev mapper and other nonsense that is incomprehensible to me.
I managed to install win2012r2 on a virtual machine, on another win8.1x64 virtual machine, and through dancing with a tambourine it turned out to launch and manage the system from an image over the network. All this with the help of the ccboot program. It is free for up to 5 clients.
So far, the plans are to understand what writeback is, how to save the data of a particular user or delete them at will (most likely this is writeback) and, most importantly, understand how to update applications from this image.
03/21/2018
We ordered a server for 8 ssd (3x for raid5 for applications and games, 2x for writeback - everything that the user uploads / saves, 1x for windows images - m2, 1x for server OS, 1x for general caching - m2), i5 + 2gbps port .
We wait.
06/04/2018
So, the server is working, 2 gigabit ports look to the local network, connected to 2 dlink switches. One port looks to the outside and from it all the necessary nishtyakov are downloaded.
53 diskless clients boot in ~1 minute. There were dances with a tambourine, because We use 10 different types of mat. boards, respectively, with different network chips. But 9 of them managed to run win7x64 with PXE-rom.
In general, this project can be described as "we harness for a long time, we go fast."
Willing to answer questions if any.

Answer 1

Which server system to choose? Debian or OpenSolaris?

If using oraclevm - solaris
Dofiga and more. But everything is conquered, especially for study it is useful to step on a rake.
This is not true if you are going to host a bunch of virtual machines there. All parameters are chosen empirically.
In general, any managed, even long. For you, the switches differ only in functionality, but you don’t need any of the functions described, just switch Ethernet.
PS As if the Internet cafe does not imply the use of the office and Photoshop. All you need is a browser, and it can be perfectly run in Linux. There are excellent solutions for virtualization of the programs you suggested from citrix (including vdi), vmware etc. It is bad for a pack of virtual machines on win to use a host tench