New Toy @ GeoClicks...

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  1. #1

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    New Toy @ GeoClicks...

    A new server has just been commissioned .. and should (if all things go well, become the home for geoexpat.com and a couple of other key sites for a long time...)

    2 x AMD Dual Core Opterons 2212's
    8GB RAM
    5 X 300GB SCSI drives
    64 bit linux ..

    Should last us about 6 months..


  2. #2

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    what raid controller?

    what web sites are you running on that machine?

    Last edited by hk.com; 02-02-2007 at 02:00 PM.

  3. #3

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    Quote Originally Posted by KnowItAll:
    A new server has just been commissioned .. and should (if all things go well, become the home for geoexpat.com and a couple of other key sites for a long time...)

    2 x AMD Dual Core Opterons 2212's
    8GB RAM
    5 X 300GB SCSI drives
    64 bit linux ..

    Should last us about 6 months..
    AWESOME. Alsmost the same spec as my Database server....although I went Microsoft and Intel........so maybe not the same but close.

    Nice spec

  4. #4

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    hk.com -- no sites up and running yet. The server is being burnt in and configured by the server guy. We've got an Adaptec controller .. not sure what model -- i've been told it will work.


    Monde: If I played with the money you folks play with .. I'd play the "my disks are bigger than yours" game .. but sorry, I cannot afford to.


  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by KnowItAll:
    Monde: If I played with the money you folks play with .. I'd play the "my disks are bigger than yours" game .. but sorry, I cannot afford to.
    I never play that game. Stupid game to play. Sorry if it came across that way, wasn't meant to

    I had hours of fun setting it up. I really do think it is an awesome machine. 1.5 terrabytes (give or take) of information is nothing to sneeze at.

  6. #6

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    >> Sorry if it came across that way

    Just kidding. Should have added a few smilies ..


  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by KnowItAll:
    >> Sorry if it came across that way

    Just kidding. Should have added a few smilies ..
    No worries.....I have friends who do play that game and it drives me NUTS. I get what I need and what will last a year or so not the biggest or best.....ROI and all that.

    Also started my Career as a Hardware guy so I still love new servers and pc's. If I can put them together so much the better.

  8. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by KnowItAll:
    hk.com -- no sites up and running yet. The server is being burnt in and configured by the server guy. We've got an Adaptec controller .. not sure what model -- i've been told it will work.
    Well you should care about the controller. All the horse power will be useless if you don't have the disk IO power you need.

    Are the SCSI drives held in an internal drive bays? how many scsi channels does the disk cage/bay have? Most servers out there at most have 2 scsi channels for the internal cage. I am still looking for one which has quad channels.

    Shoving more than 4 drives on one SCSI channel will result on throughput degradation.

    Personally rather than going for a few BIG drives, it is better to get more smaller drives and spread the on the channels. 10 or 16 drives will always beat 4 big ones.

    Adaptec are not that great for disk throughput, however when you have a major cock up on hand they don't tend to let you down like other brands have let me down in the past. Still if you have problems the down time, raid rebuild or what ever is minimal. I like Adaptec as you can create the RAID 5 and you can immediately start restoring data or even installing the OS on the RAID5 volume before it has finished building.

    Personally for monster web site that are getting many small request like page serves, I recommend Sun E4500/E5500 they have massive scallability and are dirt cheap. For less than HK$20K, I can set you up with a Sun Ex500 box with 12 CPU (400Mhz, 8MB cache), and 14GB of RAM which will handle masses of concurrent users pounding a site. At the prices these units are at you can run keep on spare powered off, to scavenge parts or what ever. Using solaris 10 you can partition CPUs on the machine if you want for specific tasks if you fancy and also you get to run ZFS.

  9. #9

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    For your burn in do simulate lots of problems with drives, pull drives out, rebuild, power off during a rebuild, move them from drive bay test the hot spare works properly. I personally like to keep a HOT spare drive per channel so that your SCSI traffic does not become unbalanced accross channels. If you only have one hot spare and the raid RAID rebuilds by replacing drive which is no the other channel you will have more traffic going on one channel than the other.


  10. #10

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    >> Well you should care about the controller.

    I really don't care that much about the hardware, as we lease the equipment on short term and very flexible contracts and good SLA from the hosting company to replace faulty hardware.

    As long as the server guy tells me that the equipment can handle 500 queries per second on the DB, I'm ok.


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