Official Server Upgrade discussion

[Clarity]

Are you going to still ship it to Arizona once built, or keep it at home? I assume if you ship it to Arizona it must be a rack-mounted system. I'll give that contact a jingle first thing Monday morning (Hawaii time).

If we build it, it will stop here on the way to AZ. My plan would be to have it fully configured and ready to go with a fully functional copy of the site before I shipped it to AZ. That way, the moment it was online, I could point the DNS to the new IP, and then import whatever the current state of the old database was one more time. If that makes any sense.

If we do still go with Dell (or someone like Dell) it will ship directly to AZ.

Speaking of all of this, I should probably start talking to AZ...

So yes, rack-mount no matter what. Have to admit, given where we are with the drive, I'm inclined to build in order to keep costs as low as possible. Will need some buffer above and beyond the cost of the machine to ship, pay off any contractor-type in AZ to install the box and get it online, and there are always other ninja expenses waiting to jump out and kick you in the balls that you didn't see coming.

 

[BrutusMaximus]

If we build it, it will stop here on the way to AZ. My plan would be to have it fully configured and ready to go with a fully functional copy of the site before I shipped it to AZ. That way, the moment it was online, I could point the DNS to the new IP, and then import whatever the current state of the old database was one more time. If that makes any sense.

Can take your time building it, getting the OS where you want it, make sure everything is cool, so I dont think we'll have a prob there.

The Dell that Mili posted is similar to what I was finding when configuring complete systems. They dont want to sell smaller scsi drives anymore, so you're stuck with buying 5 73 giggers, and that really drives the price up.

Plus yeah, that is about $2k more than we'd spend if we build it. Would trust the hardware more if we build it as well.

 

[ScarletInMyVeins]

Maybe I missed something but why will the new server be in AZ? Isn't the current one at your home Clarity?

 

[Deety]

What's the timeline here? When does the new server need to be purchased in order to ensure there's time for setup/shipping/etc. before fall?

 

[Clarity]

Maybe I missed something but why will the new server be in AZ? Isn't the current one at your home Clarity?

Nope, the current machine has been in AZ as long as the site has been around.

What's the timeline here? When does the new server need to be purchased in order to ensure there's time for setup/shipping/etc. before fall?

No firm timeline. I'm starting to feel like we can get the ball rolling very soon. Even if it takes a couple weeks before I feel ready to ship the completed machine off to the hosting facility, if we started this in May, it would be there in June at the latest. We will definitely be on the new box well before the Fall. Which is great, gives me time to turn my attention to the stats engine (I realize that's nearly become a mythological beast) programmer to see if we can get that in place before the Fall as well. All this 'down time' has allowed him to do something great. Before, the engine was built right into vBulletin. Now, it's a standalone piece of code that is capable of blending seamlessly with nearly any forum software. But one thing at a time. I could see starting to order parts next week.

I suspect I'll start a thread that updates the process regularly once started.

 

[Clarity]

Okay. With the tee money in around $360, and the drive winding down, we look to have around $5400. Bear in mind, these figures are all rounded and off the top of my head, so forgive how vague they are. I'm going to have to pay someone to do some of the work to help us get installed at the hosting facility. We're going to also have to pay for shipping from FL (assuming I build it here) to AZ. Should be fine on the domain and the software for a while, I may have to upgrade some of the tools I use, but that's negligible. Depending on how much guys like Dryden and BrutusMax can help out, may also have to pay some admin type to come in and do some of the heavy hitting configuration work -- or may not. Total question mark. I also have to allow breathing room for expenses that can come up before the next drive.

Something like Dell appears to be out of reach, which may be moot as the consensus seems to be that we're better off building ourselves anyway. So let's say we have $4500 to spend on parts and OS for our new server, would you two (and/or others as they feel interested and willing) spec out a "working" copy of our desired parts list -- ideally with links to where we'd be best served buying these parts from? I say 4500 with a few things in mind. One, it gives us a buffer above and beyond the cost of the machine, and the related expenses mentioned above, which is good since I might not run a Fall drive after how hard we all pushed and discussed this one. Two, that's not a 'final' number, it sounds like there might be a little more tee money coming in, may also be a few final donations. But 4500 is good in the sense that we know we have at least that, so let's start looking directly at what we can do with it.

I know some parts and builds have been discussed previously, I'm just hoping we can take all that discussion and come up with a current build given all the issues at hand, including the $.

Finally, a lot of people have really gone above and beyond during this drive. We're talking about different ways (that fit in with the general approach and ideals of the site) to recognize these folks, as I feel is entirely appropriate. While we're all on equal footing around here, people can always look to see who the mods and admins are, who is providing content and information (direction) to different areas. Likewise, they should be able to see not only who has contributed, but who has exceeded any reasonable expectation or imagination on that front with their contribution -- whether said contribution be in tangible, intangible, or both. Anyway, I digress, we'll get to that in due time. For the moment, let's (with a nod towards BMax and Dry) put a final draft of a spec sheet/pricing list together.

 

[BrutusMaximus]

I will PM Dry and we'll start working on somethin.

Shipping costs from Cali to Ohio for a server, or something close, is usually in the area of $50-75. Just so you have a ballpark idea.........that is for overnight or 2 day.

 

[jwinslow]

I will PM Dry and we'll start working on somethin.

Shipping costs from Cali to Ohio for a server, or something close, is usually in the area of $50-75. Just so you have a ballpark idea.........that is for overnight or 2 day.

As long as we know it is just as reliable, would it be smarter to send it at a slower shipping rate.... and either spend that money on more components or more insurance for the shipping.

 

[CoosMeister]

You need to have 5k insurance on that. Don't risk anything.

 

[BrutusMaximus]

The places I order from are very reliable. Have ordered from them for years. New Egg, Mwave, Page........etc.

Sure we can stick with just ground shipping, save $20 or $30. I was just tryin to give an idea of the cost involved. Nothing major.

 

[Dryden]

Thanks for the df output! Surprisingly, the system footprint is only 7Gb, so in my spec I dropped a hard drive, some RAM, and used the savings to upgrade the power supply to a 3x redundant. In regards to building the server, my services are always available. If the parts were ordered and drop-shipped here to 43130 I can assemble the machine, install the OS and anything else necessary, then ship on to the next destination, either to the hosting facility in AZ or directly to you Clarity. The only downside to multi-ship is that we're going to blow about $50 each time we do it ... this is an enterprise-class server system and weighs a ton. The advantage to having me assemble however is that, as I mentioned previously, I have experience with this system setup, and installing Fedora Core 3 (which has the best EMT-64/SMP processor support of the *nix'es -- to support the hyper-threading in each Xeon, so the system properly runs as a functional quad-processor system). Incidentally, this configuration is using the Adaptec 2010S ZCR (Zero Channel RAID) card, which is a special daughtercard design to plug into the PCI-X slots of the motherboard and leverage the on-board SCSI-320 to make it RAID 0/1/5/JBOD. I don't know about BSD(i), but there are Linux drivers for the Adaptec ZCR cards that are released and supported by Adaptec, so it's a highly reliable/stable system.

The basic system I've spec'ed out uses a 4U chassis with 8x hot-swap drive trays (front accessible), 6x hot-swap 5000RPM cooling fans (tool-lessly accessible), and a 760W triple redundant power-supply. The hardware uses 3x37Gb hard drives in a RAID-5 array yeilding 74Gb of usable disk space with an extra hard drive configured as a hot spare. The core is dual 3.0Ghz Intel Xeon EMT-64 processors with 4Gb Crucial DDR2 SDRAM. I've also added in the cost of the Floppy and CD-ROM drives (a whopping $24.00 extra) which brings the grand total to $4022.00! Since the processor prices drop about $10/week, by Mother's Day this system will cost about $4000 on the button.

The motherboard has onboard SATA w/ RAID, SCSI-320 (RAID provided by Adaptec ZCR daughtercard), dual Gigabit Ethernet, and ATI video.

$701.01 CSE-743S1-R760 11Bay Mid Twr 4U Eatx Beige 760W RPS Ssi SCA U320
http://www.provantage.com/buy-7supm...760w-rps-ssi-sca-u320-supermicro-shopping.htm

$26.34 Rackmount Rail Kit For SC-742 Chassis 420I 420S 300I 500S
http://www.provantage.com/buy-7SUPM...0s-300i-500s-supermicro-cse-pt26-shopping.htm

$520.00 SUPERMICRO X6DH8-G2-0 Dual Socket 603/604 Intel E7520 E-ATX Server Motherboard - Retail
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=13-182-043&depa=0

$671.98 ($335.99x2) Intel Xeon 3.0 Nocona 800MHz FSB 1MB L2 Cache Socket 604 Processor - Retail
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=19-117-026&depa=1

$1146.68 ($286.67x4) Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR2 400 (PC2 3200) Memory - OEM
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145077

$199.99 Adaptec SCSI RAID 2010S PCI SCSI Controller Card RAID 0/1/5/10 JBOD - Retail
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=16-103-138&depa=0

$732.00 ($183.00x4) Seagate Cheetah ST336607LC 36.7GB 10,000 RPM 8M Cache SCSI Ultra320 80pin HD - OEM
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822111132

$15.00 SONY Beige 52X CD-ROM IDE CD-ROM Drive - OEM
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827101130

$9.00 SONY MPF920 Beige 1.44MB 3.5" Internal Floppy Drive - OEM
http://www2.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16821103109

 

[ScarletInMyVeins]

Dryden... what is the probability that we would have to upgrade some componet(s) of that machine in the near future? Or do you believe that will easily handle anything we can throw at it? BTW I have no knowledge of this crap so your post might as well have been written in japanese, except for the price part

 

[BrutusMaximus]

Dont wanna answer for him, but in my opinion the only thing that MAY need to be upgraded in the near future on this thing would be Ram.

By the way Dry.........that is one kick ass setup there. I am impressed :)


I dont think we can afford the floppy drive though, damn things are expensive.

 

[ScarletInMyVeins]

so you both agree that the setup that he posted is the way to go? What's next? Clarity's approval? What are the next steps and how long do you think it'll be before the new server is in place and ready to go? The reason I'm asking is because I still have orders comming in for shirts and there will be more money flowing if needed for extra parts/shipping if needed

 

[Dryden]

Dryden... what is the probability that we would have to upgrade some componet(s) of that machine in the near future? Or do you believe that will easily handle anything we can throw at it? BTW I have no knowledge of this crap so your post might as well have been written in japanese, except for the price part

For the foreseeable future, slim to none.

The disk setup information that Clarity posted shows that 74Gb would double the current capacity of BP. With 4 hard drives in a RAID-5 array (3 active + 1 hot spare), 2 of the 4 hard drives could go down and the system would still chug along at 100% availability.

I think 4Gb of RAM is more than enough -- in fact even that might be too much. I'd have to do some reading up on MySQL and vBulletin, but unless I'm mistaken the board software system can't address a single table larger than 2Gb. I've chosen to use 4-1Gb RAM chips rather than 2-2Gb, which is drastically cheaper, but there are still 4 slots available, so the RAM could be upgraded to 8Gb/12Gb easily.

The front of the case similarly has 8 hard drive bays, with only 4 in use, so as the need arises it would be relatively cheap to throw in another 148Gb of hard disks. That even presumes using the el-cheap-o low capacity 37Gb drives (as opposed to 74Gb drives).

If we run out of disk space, we could always just delete the hot chick thread too.

Oh, regarding the system memory ... since the 4Gb set runs $1150, expanding to 8Gb (forgot about the stats engine) would put the system price tag right around $5200. However, we would lose the ability to expand RAM later without pulling existing RAM and selling it at a loss to recoup the investment.

The problem here with the memory purchase (and Intel's architecture) is that the 8 memory modules can only be used when using something called 'single-rank' RAM. Only 4 memory modules are available when using what's called 'dual-rank' RAM (the system bus speed is cut in half since the memory requires twice as much bandwidth for I/O).

1-Gb modules are almost always single-rank.
2-Gb modules are (right now) almost exclusively dual-rank.

e.g. The motherboard could support 16Gb of memory ... when that particular type of memory eventually costs less than 4-figures per module.

Regardless, I think Brutus and I are both in agreement that 4Gb is plenty, so debating anything beyond that is pretty much moot.