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Trash Talk - Newer-er Server

Mine GO BOOM - Sat Apr 09, 2011 11:52 pm
Post subject: Newer-er Server

The old server was about to have its fourth birthday, but instead it went out with its third power supply. Once I replaced the power supply, everything still works but the core system Calypso that runs Xen 2 decided to split itself in half since the last time the server was restarted (1.5 years) and is missing random Python modules. Ugh.

So instead, I treat you all with a better system. Why run 3x 300GB 7.2K SATA drives when I can have 6x hot swappable 74GB 15K SCSI drives (one hot spare)? Switch the comsumer E6300 2.8GHz dual core over to dual 3.0GHz Xeon processors. Upgrade the 4x 1GB RAM to 4x 2GB. And best of all, redundant hot swappable 700W power supplies.

Oh, did I mention I got two Dell PowerEdge 2850? I now have a cold spare of everything, ideally in the next few months switch that into a full hot spare server, able to vMotion Titan (the virtual machine running this site) whenever I feel like it or if a whole system tanks.

Price of the upgrade: $0
Price of my incoming power bill during my home testing time: Oh god, I don't want to look

I got two of these Dell 2850's (only one seen here, other is installed at the data center).

And I got two 1850 to play around with VMware's vMotion stuff.

Top is the old hardware. The next two were random spare half 1U servers I got a year ago for spare parts. Then the 1850s and the spare 2850. This is all setup in my garage for now, connected via a wifi-repeater to the rest of my home network. I did turn them all on just to hear the noise, but I doubt I'll ever have more than two turned on at once, and even then only when actively working on them.

JoWie - Sun Apr 10, 2011 5:22 am
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Very nice. Do you use any electronic filters?

Any advantages vmware has over xen?

Blocks - Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:22 pm
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I have to ask -- how did this upgrade cost $0?

Edit: Never mind, I just read the other topic.

Mine GO BOOM - Sun Apr 10, 2011 3:42 pm
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JoWie wrote:

Very nice. Do you use any electronic filters?

No, because I assumed that a data center, whos only three jobs is cold air, high reliable bandwidth, and clean uninterrupted power would be able to do all three. As has been shown for the past few years, they've only managed to do the first one reliably. If they were not so cheap (get like 1/2 price of everywhere else), I'd have switch a long time ago. Though now I'm asking for a 220v power line instead of the 110v.

JoWie wrote:

Any advantages vmware has over xen?

Its upgrade strategy is better, and vMotion is cool as fuck. Going from Xen 2 to Xen 3 is a huge step which I never followed through with because too much changed. Also, they don't keep up with kernels that much and are pretty fragile. I still support Xen, but VMware's products are much more reliable and easier to maintain for those that are not familiar with Linux. Now that I have hardware which is officially supported by VMware ESX, it is significantly easier to deal with.

As it stands now, even my brother Shanky could upload an ISO, create a new virtual machine, installed Windows/Ubuntu/whatever, and have it running with almost no interaction with me except asking what static IP is free (I have 8 available, only 4 used full time), and even then our private little Wiki will let him pick one himself and use it. Plus I host a couple of private gaming servers in which he can now turn on/off whenever he feels like it, or take snapshots with VMware and do server upgrades. Breaks, just revert back. Before, I used LVM's snapshots which isn't as clean and requires a lot more manual interaction.

(Deactived B l a h e r) - Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:18 pm
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blah-er@colduntu:~$ ping -c 4 titan.mineplowers.com
PING titan.mineplowers.com (208.67.185.188) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from titan.mineplowers.com (208.67.185.188): icmp_req=1 ttl=53 time=76.7 ms
64 bytes from titan.mineplowers.com (208.67.185.188): icmp_req=2 ttl=53 time=76.9 ms
64 bytes from titan.mineplowers.com (208.67.185.188): icmp_req=3 ttl=53 time=77.6 ms
64 bytes from titan.mineplowers.com (208.67.185.188): icmp_req=4 ttl=53 time=76.2 ms

--- titan.mineplowers.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 76.287/76.910/77.663/0.536 ms

Dr Brain - Sun Apr 10, 2011 7:22 pm
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I don't know much about data center power, but I do know that switching regulators tend to pollute the mains power.

If their 220 is cleaner than their 110, then it's probably due to having fewer computers attached. You may not want to count on it staying clean.

Mine GO BOOM - Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:20 pm
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Dr Brain wrote:

If their 220 is cleaner than their 110, then it's probably due to having fewer computers attached. You may not want to count on it staying clean.

I agree completely, but since I have a full spare identical machine I am not too worried yet. Having redundant power supplies with an alert to let me know when one dies, I can hot-swap it out. Thus at the current rate, I'm good for 4 more years.

As for switching to 220v, I'm completely sure that is why it is better since it appears only a few larger customers who have their own caged off floor space are using 220v. I'll find out tomorrow if I could get a 220v line ran for my shared cage.

SuSE - Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:21 pm
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I don't know much about data center power, but I do know that Dell blows.

Mine GO BOOM - Mon Apr 11, 2011 12:25 am
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SuSE wrote:

I don't know much about data center power, but I do know that Dell blows.

Ok, mail me a replacement server. I'll pay you as much as I did for these 4 servers.

Not disagreeing, but it is better than what I had, and the price was right.

SuSE - Mon Apr 11, 2011 9:03 am
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Certainly.

Doc Flabby - Thu Apr 14, 2011 1:38 pm
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mine go boom every year!

D1st0rt - Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:35 pm
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On a completely unrelated note, awesome avatar. I currently have the virus set as my ringtone

Confess - Fri May 27, 2011 3:23 am
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I used to know the owner of Volumedrive pretty well. He would give me colocation for $30/m...If you're interested in colocating those servers shoot me an email and I'll see if he'd be willing to still do that for me.

Mine GO BOOM - Fri May 27, 2011 12:35 pm
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Thanks, I already have a very cheaply discounted colocation going on, but they do seem to suck with supplying me with clean power. But being only a 10 minute drive from my house is a huge advantage.