The New Server is HERE!

[Scott Greczkowski]

I am happy to announce that the new server has arrived here in Connecticut and we are currently loading FreeBSD 7.0 on it.

I am impressed with the quality of build that the folks from ServersDirect.COM did the the server, in fact inside its one of the cleanest looking setup I have ever seen. Everything is wiretied and put in places to insure maximum airflow.

Here are the specs of the new server:

SuperMicro SC815TQ-560UB 1U Black Chassis with 560w power Supply
Supermicro X7DGU Server Motherboard
2x Intel Quad Core Xeon E5345 2.33Ghz 1333MHz Prcessors
Supermicro PCI-E Riser Card (RSC-R1UU-E16)
8GB 4PC's Kingston 2GB DDR2 667 MHZ FB-DIMM
3Ware 9650SE-4LPML RAID Controller Card
3Ware Raid Battery Backup Unit (BBU-Module-003)
Slim Black DVD-ROM drive
Intel 82563EB Dual Port Gigabit Ethernet Controller
ATI ES1000 Video Controller Card with 16MB of video memory
Rail Mounting Kit

The server is being loaded and configured here in Connecticut, after it is done we will ship it to our ISP in Dallas, who will then hook it up and cross connect it to our existing server.

This is a very exciting time for us. This new server would not be possible without our Pub Members who help us keep the lights on!

Photos are below!

 

[dantheman77]

hope it "serves" you well!!!

 

[stevelite]

Hey Scott, how about we give a name for this server?
Maybe we can do poll of different names and pick one.

 

[jcrandall]

Hmm, could rack mount that with some of those new D* HR21 pro's - that would look cool.

Looks like a very powerful server to 'back us up'

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok got the OS all loaded. Now it up to LER to work his magic so I can stick it back in the box and mail it to our ISP.

I was watching the server today while compiling some programs and its neat to see 8 CPU's doing the work... and the server load for doing this heavy CPU still was barely moving the load meter.

 

[LER]

remember, this beast will be mostly the Database server

 

[Foxbat]

Nice that you're running a 64-bit OS so you can make use of that 8 GB of RAM. What's the maximum the server can handle in the future?

Gee, LER, there are only 12 fans in that server. How loud could they be?

 

[LER]

Looks like 32G of memory max:
Supermicro, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Xeon Boards | X7DGU

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Max ram is 32GB.

This server was setup with a 21GB Swap file.

This server is actually very QUIET, in fact I have a few desktop machines which are louder. This is a very well made server.

 

[LER]

you mean 21G Swap. Shouldn't need it

FreeBSD doesn't use swap unless you fill all of Real.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

We have a 16GB swap on this server, and I don't think we have even used 1k of it.

The server we re on now has only 6GB of ram and thats running everything.

 

[Foxbat]

How much would you need to hold the whole database in RAM? That would speed things up a bit, I would think. That's why AltaVista used Alphas back in the 1990s when 12 GB was a lot of memory.

 

[LER]

FreeBSD and MySQL cache what's referenced. You also want the writes to go direct to Disk so in case of a crash for recovery.

We do have Battery-Backed Cache for the disk, so that helps a lot.

The entire VB database for SatelliteGuys is 1.9G.

Not a lot these days.

 

[RedSavina]

Sweet! Very exciting stuff (at least for some of us ).

 

[daboogas94e]

that is very exciting!!!!

 

[darrencp22]

Good to see you guys arent resting on your laurels!

 

[LER]

This new server is going to kick butt. The FreeBSD kernel guys have done amazing performance things with the new ULE scheduler, and fixing / improving the locking.

I was impressed with how fast it rebuilt itself (Updating from 7.0-Release to 7.0-STABLE).

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Ok the new server has been shipped.

Took me a long time to pack it up, seems like its part of the family already.

We spent most of the week loading it, securing it, patching it and tweeking it. This is a really powerfull server.

We are running this one much like our existing server with a full RAID 10 setup. This server however has a little more space with 596Gigabytes usable drive space.

With our current database being less then 2 gig in size, its going to take us a long time to fill it up.

After UPS picks it up and gets it into the system I will be able to tell when it is expected to arrive in Dallas and then from there it could take 24 / 48 hours for them to get it hooked up.

After its hooked up it will probably sit a few days and then we will close the site for a few hours eaither on a weeknight or weekend to copy the databases to the new server and cut over to the new server.

I was amazed how cheap it was to ship this server, until I added in the insurance for it, the insurance cost over what it cost to ship the server without insurance.

So now we wait and let UPS work its magic of getting this big box from my office in Hartford, Connecticut to our ISP in downtown Dallas.

 

[digiblur]

I am guessing Thursday of next week if it goes out tonight. Although it could "jump" service and make it for Wednesday due to Dallas being a large hub.

 

[KE4EST]

Great pics Scott that is what I was wanting to see. I can't wait until it is up and running.