Building a new server for SG

Post by **Philip** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 7:15 am

I am in the process of building a new server for SG. The old one just needs an OS update and hardware upgrades, then it will be used as a backup server.

Here are the specs for the new one:

1 ea. 6018R-WTR Supermicro barebone server - 1u case with dual hot-swappable Power Supplies, dual Haswell processor support, 4 hot-swappable hdd ports, etc.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/syst ... 8r-wtr.cfm

2 ea. Intel Xeon CPUs - E5-2603 v3 six core Haswell processor 1.6GHz 6.4GT/s 15MB LGA 2011-v3
http://ark.intel.com/products/83349/Int ... e-1_60-GHz

32gb (4x 8GB) Crucial (Micron) ddr4-2133 1Gx72 ECC/REG CL15 - CT4K8G4RFS4213
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct4k8g4rfs4213

2 ea. SSDs - Intel 730 240GB - setting up in RAID 1
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... eries.html

2 ea. HDDs - Western Digital RE 1TB 64MB cache - model WD5003ABYZ
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=580

1 ea. Supermicro SATA SSD DOM (Disk on Module) 32GB - SSD-DM032-PHI
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

Easto · Post by **Easto** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 10:01 am

Looking forward to seeing how the site reacts to the new hardware!

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 1:33 pm

Easto wrote:Looking forward to seeing how the site reacts to the new hardware!

Slower than before! Just to make Philip rage.

Sounds like a nice rig.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 1:42 pm

YARDofSTUF wrote:Slower than before! Just to make Philip rage.

Sounds like a nice rig.

It is a nice rig, faster hardware than the old one and latest Linux kernel to avoid some of the recently discovered gcc vulnerability (GHOST CVE-2015-0235)..

As for the speed, it should do great, once I apply my super-secret-ninja-linux-ssd-tuning tweaks on it

YARDofSTUF · Post by **YARDofSTUF** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 1:46 pm

Philip wrote:As for the speed, it should do great, once I apply my super-secret-ninja-linux-ssd-tuning tweaks on it

AKA, Plugging it in correctly.

Post by **YeOldeStonecat** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 2:17 pm

Couple of spare cores for Folding!

Post by **Philip** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:33 pm

YARDofSTUF wrote:AKA, Plugging it in correctly.

Already there...

just working on LAMP, mail server, analyzer server, compiling some extra modules, etc.

Post by **Philip** » Wed Feb 11, 2015 9:36 pm

YeOldeStonecat wrote:Couple of spare cores for Folding!

ikr ! 12 cores total.

It's idling at about 100 watts (120v) draw, power management has improved a lot in the past few years.

John · Post by **John** » Fri Feb 13, 2015 12:23 am

Why are you building your own vs going aws or rackspace?

Oldschoolcool

Post by **Philip** » Fri Feb 13, 2015 2:49 pm

Uhm because of all the control over each and every little setting in LAMP, plus custom server software like the Analyzer backend, etc. Also, I can slap all the CPUs/RAM/SSDs I want in a box without someone charging me for it

With a 5+years lifecycle it just makes sense to me, gives me a lot more freedom, idk. If the bandwidth ever becomes unmanageable, I can always offload static parts to a CDN.

Mark · Post by **Mark** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:03 am

looks like a nice system you are building, has the total forum traffic slowed down or just the general forum ?

slightly off topic, is there a mobile version of the forums i can use ?

Post by **Philip** » Sat Feb 14, 2015 9:13 am

Hi Mark,

The total forum traffic has slowed, not just the general forum. The main site traffic has increased somewhat though. As for the mobile version of the forums, yes, there is a "Theme" selection at the bottom-left corner of pages (if you're at the full site) where you can choose the "Mobile style". I just adjusted the settings for the templates a bit, so that mobile devices would be recognized better for automatic theme switching.

Post by **Philip** » Thu Feb 19, 2015 1:47 pm

Everything is officially up and running on the new server. There are still a couple of scripts that have issues with the new PHP/MariaDB on the main site, I'm in the process of updating them. If you notice some page/tool that does not work properly, please let me know. TIA

Speed of pages should be improved, the new server has a lot of RAM to play with (Zend opcache and APCu user cache

).

Ashdaw · Post by **Ashdaw** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 9:34 am

Very good Philip, love the hardware goodness. The site is good.

Post by **Philip** » Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:16 pm

It had a number of issues on the backend, functions that needed to be updated because of deprecated PHP commands, etc., but it's mostly up and running now.