Cellar servers replacement project thread
 

I figured have a thread to document all this stuff as it goes along. Some of y'all enjoy the details of this stuff.

Well the total of giving, which ended when I said how much came in, was $926. I've reserved $100 for the mug for this month, which if you hit F5 now sits at 80%.

I realized that it would be good to really put some engineering into this, because there are an awful lot of *variety* in the servers listed on the eBay. Since the current configuration is holding up pretty well, but doesn't have a backup setup right now, the project doesn't have to finish in a week. I can take a bit longer and really make it as good as it can be.

In this price range, looking at two devices, we can probably afford two 4-year-olds. That may sound odd, but servers are quite different from the desktop computers you are familiar with. They will likely have two power supplies, for redundancy. Two network cards, so that one can do interesting things like connect to a remote disk array without using traffic on the Internet network.

Servers are designed to operate 24x7, and so there is more engineering that goes into the fans, the backplane, everything. They're built to last, so a four-year-old has plenty of life left to it. The original Cellar servers have lasted some ten years. These should last us another eight, one hopes.

The two big server companies are HP and Dell. Some would say IBM and Sun and Supermicro should also be considered for various reasons. I think this may be a good time to go with the big players. The systems are well-known and well-documented on the net. Supermicro I have had a bad experience with, as a server I built for another project *never* got working. (The Cellar briefly tried to make that one a server project y buying a new CPU for it, but it failed.)

The Wikipedia List of Dell Poweredge Servers page is a great resource. If you go there, we are looking at Generations 8 through 10, and only at rack chassis configurations.

Already it gets complicated. We have a decent amount of rack space to play with - we're unusual that way! - but what makes more sense? Theoretically, we could have a *cluster* of older 1U systems or two younger 2U systems. What requires more maintenance? What can failover well? What runs my choice of Linux best?

That's why the question of our best setup takes time and research and thought.

Now 90%, thank you donor!

~

The Wikipedia List of HP Products, ProLiant page is not half as useful as the Dell page. We are only interested in DL - which stands for "Rack Chassis", because that's how marketing people think.

The G-number is which Generation the servers are, so for example the G3 is much older than our target G5. (The G6s are too young and therefore too expensive.)

320 and 360 are 1U - one rack space in size. Very thin, but also more subject to problems, because everything's stuffed in there and the fans must be very tiny. The 380 and 385 are 2U, more roomy, more flexible.

The beefier 580 and up are out of our price range. So the ProLiant 380 G5 and ProLiant 385 G5 are the HP targets.

Both systems don't have to be bought and set up at the same time. In fact that makes the project easier for me to accomplish, in a two-step process. Since each system is a backup of the other, a single system should be able to hold the Cellar alone. Moving all the IP addresses will be the same hassle it was last week.

So! the plan is to buy, receive, and set up the first server, first installing it here at the house and then taking it down to Wilmington to set up; and then buy, receive, and set up the second one at the house and take it to Wilmington to finish the project.

The current database server is holding up, but the nightly backup makes the Cellar a sad place to be at around 5:10 am Eastern Time. That's because we're saving ALL the data since 2001, and the nightly backup and maintenance of that is beating up the database server. (This new server idea should have been done earlier.) In the end, the current database server can stick around as a place to hold secondary backups or something.

There are some eBay considerations. For example, these servers should come with their rack mounting rails. This is no small deal. The rails let the server sit solidly in the rack and maintenance can be done by sliding them out individually. eBayers sometimes specify rails, sometimes don't. Rails can be bought separately, but figuring out which rails support which systems is a hassle. HP rails don't fit on Dell servers and vice-versa, and different generations' rails are different too.

Then: the drives. I will probably buy systems that have no drives and populate then with new high-quality drives, in whatever form factor looks good. This changes the costs around a little, but drives start to fail around 4-5 years in, so even in a RAID situation I'd rather start new.

But even that isn't so simple. The drives have to have the mountable "sleds" so they can push right into the hot-swappable drive slots for each particular server. Companies do this to make things more expensive; you can't buy an HP drive with a sled for under $300. So some ingenuity is going to have to go into this; I need no drives, but I need the sleds.

I like this thread.

My step son works for dell , I can see if he can do us a Hook up if you like

Even 10% off refurb isn't gonna get us to eBay prices on four-year-old gear man, but... maybe there's some sorta secret off-lease stuff? Go for it.

I agree with your point UT. However, I wouldn't let the absence of a set of rack rails or a given hot swap drive tray put the kibosh on an otherwise perfect server, should you find one. It's possible to find the individual components orphaned from some different system or source, like the one I linked above.

Not for the older servers. I just looked for disk caddies for a 2850 and Dell does not stock such things. They are available on eBay at about $11 apiece but in server configurations where you are putting together 6 of them, suddenly price is an issue.

I see your point.

Here's another link you may find helpful. They're local and I've shopped there many times in the past.

Re-PC.

And rails... rails may turn out to be the bigger problem. In a pinch rails are only needed on the bottom server of the two, the second one can sit on top of the first one. But that's not ideal. But rail kits are $100 and up, even on the Bay.

do you have the server make and model settled then?

dell poweredge 2950? a 2U

Not quite. I'm researching everything!

The ProLiant 360 G5 looks like the choice in the HP side, and the PowerEdge 2950 for the Dell side.

Will wait to see if there's input from Zip's stepson. Meanwhile:

- rack rails for the HP are simpler and thus cheaper.
- disk caddies for the HP are more available.
- Dell supports both 2.5" and 3.5" drive form factors, HP only 2.5"
- Dell supports both SAS and SCSI drives in its RAID hardware, not sure about HP. This is important because SAS drives cost huge huge $$$

what spec are you looking for this is All greek to me

ftfy

Best use of ftfy, 2012. :)

I would say, just ask if they have some sorta program to get rid of old servers as cheap as eBay. Off-lease, refurbs, that sorta thing.

Now 100%+, wiggle room here allocated, thank you donor!

I'm sifting over every Craigslist within 200 miles.

This place in Harrisburg has a 2950 for $200 but the description is "iffy".

http://harrisburg.craigslist.org/syd/3180309844.html

I'm really tempted but the listing is 2 weeks old. I'll email and ask if it's still available. I head out Harrisburg way quite often. Mama lives across the river.

I am paying close attention since I want to set up a small server with potential here for my home network. I am not geek enough to do this myself, and no one here lives close enough to do it for me, so I figure I will just call Hire-A-Geek and have it done for me.

I do, however, want to be able to understand the Geekese when I hear it.

Pam

Old old friend of the Cellar, 1995-2001 Dwellar Failsafe just checked in with me on a 3 hour phone call. It turns out he has some Intel server hardware that might be available to us cheap. Although Intel is not HP or Dell, they can't be that far off -- and perhaps we can spend half as much on his server hardware as the database server and more on a newer HP or Dell for the main server? I wouldn't agree to anything without a full listing of what his gear is, what its value is on eBay and, most importantly, whether it's the right solution from a system engineering standpoint.

So, we are now waiting for input from Failsafe and Zippy in case there's something better or cheaper than our eBay solutions.

Lets buy a motorcycle instead!

Or spend the money on a big party!

I have that itch right now, thankfully I have no money!

How is ole Doc Failsafe?

I really wish I could talk to him, I need some advice.

Doing well he is! He's finally divorced his crazy wife and is looking to move on.

I talked to the Step son , he has no connections in the service dept any more , sorry

No prob, I'm just covering all bases here.

Have not heard back from Uncle Failsafe. Will have to ping him. If he delays further than I dunno, another week or two, I will just proceed, but it really does sound like some good hardware he has, and he would swing us a good deal.

I wish I'd known sooner. I don't hit the Meta section often. I've hit the tip jar. I also have a new tower case and power supply if you need them. I've given up on building my own computer.

Thank you sir.

The power supplies for this kind of server are different than the basic desktop; most target servers will have two power supplies so if one bites the dust they other will take over. But y'know, I've never seen a rack server's power supply die. They are over-engineered to run permanently.

I'm getting a little worried that this project is going to run into my other project -- the one where I have to find a place to live, and then move. Maybe the first half (Cellar server) can be done before the move and the second half (database server) after.

It's kinda hard to know how complicated my life will get in the next few weeks. I'm hoping for a Nov 1 move-in date. In any case I'll keep us all updated. But the one thing I don't want to do is buy one, or both servers, and then MOVE them before getting them ready and installed. It'll probably take a week for servers to ship and another week to get them all set up before taking them to Wilmington. Even that schedule is aggressive considering I am hoping to replace disk drives.

That's easy, take a wild-ass guess... then quadruple it. :fingerx:

If you find yourself near Wilmington on a weekend, give me a call. I live nearby and I'd love to have you over for some takeout or BBQ. Bruce is also pretty close to here and maybe he can stop over.

I'm buying boxes to move my household and so the project is on a bit of hold! Life in disarray, a big engineering project should not be affected by that. My new aim will be to have this all worked out by mid-November.

But I've found a nice backup solution: the old Cellar server's hard drive can be replaced, and so it can become a backup server in as short as a week! To that end, I've eBay-bought 400GB of hard drive which can go in the old Cellar chassis.

You do what you gotta do! We're not going anywhere. :)

And thanks, as always.

OK. Putting this project on hold was definitely the right decision. My life went into a much greater level of uncertainty than I ever thought, as I detailed in various threads.

Now is the right time to restart this project. Since about January 5th I've been checking out eBay auctions. What I noticed was that things seemed out of whack due to the holidays...

But on Jan 7th, people were all back to work after the holiday season... and hopefully pulling their used servers out, in auctions that will start to end on the 14th. so I'm going to make it a goal to buy at least one server by the end of next week.

If it doesn't happen, it'll be because it didn't look like good values were falling out yet.

Having a back-n-forth discussion with a seller, over three IBM 306 servers on Craigslist. For $90 each. No hard drives are included, but that is acceptable in a modern rack server.

I don't know if they would even serve our purposes, but they were so cheap that I had to shoot for them. I'm emailing the owner back and forth. Let's see what happens.

I have agreed to meet the guy on Sunday and buy the servers from him directly. They don't have hard drives, they have 2GB of memory... they don't fit the project as written, and I need to make sure they are completely supported by Linux.

But they only cost $90 (plus my mileage) for three IBM 306 servers, and that is a very good deal. So my intention is to try to figure out whether they can become a reasonable way to use them in our project.

They take two hard drives, so at the very least, one of them can be put to use as a backup server. Or all three can be put into a cluster of web servers. But we'll see!

Buy first, engineer later: when there's Craigslist, maybe that's just how it has to be!

I dont think that makes sense.

Why buy them if they can't be used? Unless you can re sell then and turn a profit?

I could surely get even money for them. But I would rather get them running and doing something useful. Even if I can just get 500GB in a RAID configuration out of one of them, that will be helpful.

Are you going to bring a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and drives to the meet? Make sure you're not buying paperweights?

Not at $30 each.

It's off anyway - they guy emailed yesterday to say that his company wanted to recycle the servers on their own.

Craigslist: so often just a big old waste of time :mad:

Booo. :(

In my personal experience, you have to act quickly. emailing back and forth for 3 days... too much can go wrong. you see it on there.... you want it... you go see it in person.... before someone else does.

maybe I've just been lucky. Motorcycle, washer dryer, couch loveseat... all done within 2 days of seeing them.

jim--i'm gonna make a thread someday called when threads collide.

i like and value your advice, this time in the stone bumming thread regarding car stuff, and here regarding craigslist stuff. i really do have to go out for a while, but whne I get back, i want to talk to you and all y'all about (another0 car on craigslist. I'm interested in getting a honda Element. it will be a second car, this one might have some other future driver, we'll see.

anyhow. thanks man.

eBay values are just about now returning to "normal"...

Pulled the trigger! On two of these:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PowerEdge-R2...item20ce7bfb0e

One will be the Cellar server and one will be the Database server. I'll be buying four hard drives and two sets of memory to go along with 'em. There is research to do to buy the memory.

Also, this seller offers rack rails for the system for $89. I'm getting one of those and the other system can just sit on top of it.

This is a generation newer than the 2950 I was thinking about, which is great, and since the hard drives and memory will be new, it will be a perfect solution for us.

sounds good!

Servers are here!

And also the rack rails, which will make installation that much easier.

Now to buy the memory. Section 7 of the R210 Technical Guide (PDF) explains what kinds it can use: Unbuffered ECC DDDR3 DIMMs, speeds of 1066/1333, 16GB Maximum capacity spread out over 4 DIMM sockets, support for 1GB, 2GB or 4GB in all configurations, but no 8GB in slot 1 only.

It would be nice to just specify 16GB in four sticks of 4GB x 2. But the budget says, let's put 4GB in the DB and 8GB in the main server. It's really all they need. Crucial.com has a configurator which drills down to exactly what is compatible. So we didn't really need to read Section 7 of the R210 Technical Guide. But we know a little more for having done so.

Bought.

I have a vague recollection of DIMM memory.

Now the drives. My intention is to run two drives in each server, in RAID 1 configuration. That means one drive can fail, and the other drive will take over until the first drive is replaced.

Section 11 of the R210 Technical Guide covers which drives are compatible. If we want to be cheap, SATA 3.5"/7.2K: 160, 250, or 1000GB, 2000GB. If we want to be all crazy performance oriented, SAS 3.5”/15K: 146, 300, or 450GB, 600GB.

We can't afford to pay $375 for 146GB SAS drives so we will have to settle for the cheap: 4 1TB SATA drives. I favor the Western Digital Black and their 5 year warranty.

Bought.

:D

Goddamn but time is flying past. I forgot to document it but remember a few posts back when a Craigslist guy didn't come through on servers he thought he was allowed to sell for his company? He actually did come through a two weeks ago, when he emailed me to offer a Dell 2950 for $250, with 8GB, including rack rails. No disks.

Although this puts us over budget already on this project, I couldn't resist. The Dell 2950 is a much better storage server with its 6 hot-swappable full-size disk docks. All I need to do with that is get the disk caddies -- and the disks of course -- and this can be a really sweet system for us.

Cool.