Topic: New Server at JRiver -- YABB and YADB should be faster (Read 14996 times)

JimH · « **on:** February 03, 2009, 02:02:46 pm »

Bob just moved the database for this forum onto our new gargantuan server.

En.gen, our systems division built it. Here are the specs:

Quote

3U Rack server
16-drive bays SAS/SATA
redundant 700 Watt PS
2-Quad Core Intel E5405 2GHZ 12 MB cache each CPU
16GB ram ECC DDR2 Full Buffered
slim line 1.44
slim dvd+rw
2-10/100/1000 on board
video on-board
2-2 port ethernet add-on card PCI-E
2-1TB 7200 32MB drives
2-300gb sas 15K drives
16-channel adaptec controller

It's running VMWare, a virtualization operating system, on top of Debian [the Host]. It has eight "guests" or "bottles" or "containers". Each of them can run a different OS. We're running Debian Linux in most and Windows Server 2003 in a couple.

The speed sensitive data is stored on 15,000 RPM drives, so it's fast. If you try a search in the forum now, it should take under two seconds.

It's taken us a couple months to get our heads around it (well Bob's head mainly), but it was worth the trouble.

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** February 03, 2009, 02:13:15 pm »

Here's a blurrycam picture from the day Bob and I installed it at the co-lo (it's the machine with the two blue lights):

Mr ChriZ · « **Reply #2 on:** February 03, 2009, 05:17:14 pm »

I wish more of our customers would buy kit like that rather than try to run 40 odd software servers off one VM server shared with 50 odd other VM servers all running on hardware with less power than my graphics calculator, claiming it will save them money. What's funny is they all ask for a requirements spec from us before purchasing our kit, and then never read the sodding thing!

phalanthus · « **Reply #3 on:** February 03, 2009, 11:24:53 pm »

did you guys win the lottery?
very impressive

bob · « **Reply #4 on:** February 04, 2009, 12:54:05 am »

We generally get a lot out of the hardware before upgrading. Most of the stuff was on a RS6000 7025-F80 for many years. A very durable and extremely reliable machine (though it was rather expensive when new and pretty large).

So far I'm liking what I'm seeing with this new iron. Moving servers, applications and the like to a VM machine from discrete servers require some different ways of thinking. I believe I'm learning a lot

BTW, I've played with MC in Sun's free virtualbox software on Linux and MacOSX (intel) and it really runs quite well IMO (though you still need a windows license). I put my music in a virtualbox shared folder on the linux machine and it works great through MC in a virtualbox container. It's pretty cool that you can just copy the container to a different OS and it still works the same.

BTW, YADB hasn't moved yet but all of the forums have.

dcwebman · « **Reply #5 on:** February 04, 2009, 07:31:15 am »

I was thinking when I logged in the forum today that it seemed a lot faster!

zxsix · « **Reply #6 on:** February 04, 2009, 07:58:09 am »

Quote from: Mr ChriZ on February 03, 2009, 05:17:14 pm

I wish more of our customers would buy kit like that rather than try to run 40 odd software servers off one VM server shared with 50 odd other VM servers all running on hardware with less power than my graphics calculator, claiming it will save them money. What's funny is they all ask for a requirements spec from us before purchasing our kit, and then never read the sodding thing!

When did I hire you?
?

hit_ny · « **Reply #7 on:** February 04, 2009, 09:30:13 am »

Quote

2-10/100/1000 on board
16-channel adaptec controller

What do these mean ?

JimH · « **Reply #8 on:** February 04, 2009, 09:32:00 am »

10/100 etc are the network ports on the motherboard. It has eight total network ports.

I believe the Adaptec controller is the RAID controller for the drives. Bob would know.

glynor · « **Reply #9 on:** February 04, 2009, 10:22:52 am »

The forums certainly feel "teh snappiez" today (and last night). Good work!

benn600 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 05, 2009, 09:43:09 pm »

It is likely a 16 port RAID card. The idea is that when you have 16 hot-swappable bays in the server, you need 1:1 ports, so you need 16 ports available for those 16 slots.

It must be nice having such an upgrade path! It looks like only a few of the bays are full. My server also has 16 hot-swappable bays but they're all full. Rock and a hard place.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #11 on:** February 06, 2009, 06:32:48 am »

What about redundancy? I don't know if I would survive many hours without interact

What you need is two of these babies with mirroring, each in a seperate building in case of fire or other catastrophes offcourse. Or, just give me the go, and I'll send you a couple of Hewlet Packard racks, blade servers with hardware and software mirroring, a SSD Fiber chanel storage solution, HP Procurve redundant managed switches and the works. Those are the coolest.

On second thought.... It might be hard to convince my boss it's a good investment

benn600 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 06, 2009, 09:40:38 am »

Notice they have TWO of the two drives ... 4 total. I'm sure they're in RAID1, which is a direct copy, 1:1.

Other RAID options with redundancy include RAID 5 or RAID6. I use RAID6 on my 16-drive server. With so many drives, but still a need for very high capacity, I couldn't go with RAID1 because I'd have to give up 4TB of space, half. Instead, with RAID6 I only have to give up two drives to redundancy, which is 1TB. Of course this means that if two drives fail, I haven't lost anything. If a third does, I'm in huge trouble. On their end, if one fails, they're fine. If a second does, then they're in big trouble.

Don't forget that RAID is never an acceptable replacement for good backups so they surely have many backups. I'm curious if this server is onsite at their Minnesota offices. If so, that's pretty neat they host everything in-house. Secondly, they should have offsite backups to protect against the worst of the worst.

glynor · « **Reply #13 on:** February 06, 2009, 10:26:58 am »

Quote from: benn600 on February 06, 2009, 09:40:38 am

Don't forget that RAID is never an acceptable replacement for good backups so they surely have many backups. I'm curious if this server is onsite at their Minnesota offices. If so, that's pretty neat they host everything in-house.

Look at Jim's comment in his post with the picture above again.

Quote from: JimH on February 03, 2009, 02:13:15 pm

Here's a blurrycam picture from the day Bob and I installed it at the co-lo (it's the machine with the two blue lights):

benn600 · « **Reply #14 on:** February 06, 2009, 10:48:00 am »

Quote from: MrHaugen on February 06, 2009, 06:32:48 am

What about redundancy? I don't know if I would survive many hours without interact

I was responding to this.

glynor · « **Reply #15 on:** February 06, 2009, 11:57:35 am »

I know, but he said it was at a co-lo, so it isn't in their building (unless they share a building with a co-lo, which seems unlikely).

benn600 · « **Reply #16 on:** February 06, 2009, 12:13:02 pm »

Okay, makes sense. Thanks.

raym · « **Reply #17 on:** February 06, 2009, 06:33:40 pm »

Yes much faster..

Was a bit disappointed yesterday though that YADB didn't find a Billy Joel best of album (+5 years old) OR the latest Fall Out Boy album - both of which are very mainstream. I've submitted them now (of course) but is there any way of YADB defaulting to an alternate database (freedb, CDDB etc) under these circumstances? Is there a legal limitation in doing so? Sorry, I guess this has been discussed numerous times before. It's just that I typically don't have much luck with MC's CD lookups and need to resort to Windows Media Player about 80% of the time.

benn600 · « **Reply #18 on:** February 06, 2009, 06:39:40 pm »

Think of it on the bright side: you can practice your typing skills.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #19 on:** February 07, 2009, 06:48:41 pm »

Quote from: glynor on February 06, 2009, 11:57:35 am

I know, but he said it was at a co-lo, so it isn't in their building (unless they share a building with a co-lo, which seems unlikely).

My bad. I had little clue of what "co-lo" was. Guess we will not have problems with the uptime then

Good to know.

benn600 · « **Reply #20 on:** February 08, 2009, 04:40:58 am »

Think of any popular site. How often do they go down? Google?

MrHaugen · « **Reply #21 on:** February 08, 2009, 06:09:04 am »

I think that google have a few more visitors than interact, but I know what you mean

bob · « **Reply #22 on:** February 09, 2009, 01:47:57 pm »

It has a 16 channel SAS/SATA controller.
I'm running raid 1 on 4 drives.
2 are very fast SAS drives which will eventually be for YADB when I get that server moved.
The other 2 are consumer level SATA drives for most of the rest.

There is a backup server though it's not as fast as the original.

We've got rotating backups on external hard drives.

This is keeping me REALLY busy

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: New Server at JRiver -- YABB and YADB should be faster (Read 14996 times)