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.
which if you hit F5 now sits at 80%.
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.
My step son works for dell , I can see if he can do us a Hook up if you like
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
what spec are you looking for this is All geek 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!
Lets buy a motorcycle instead!
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.
It's kinda hard to know how complicated my life will get in the next few weeks.
That's easy, take a wild-ass guess... then quadruple it. :fingerx:
It'll probably take a week for servers to ship and another week to get them all set up before taking them to Wilmington.
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?
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:
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:
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-R210-G6950-no-hard-drive-or-memory-installed-/140903185166?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=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.
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.
Unbuffered ECC DDDR3 DIMMs,
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.
I have a vague recollection of DIMM memory.
: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.
I made the first attempt to setup one of the R210s but... ah, the first hiccup: installing the hard drive requires a special type of screw that, according to the documentation, "Screws are supplied along with the hard drives ordered from Dell."
:mad:
What has happened here is that the eBay vendor discarded the hard drives in order to sell the unit... and discarded the mounting screws along with them.
:mad2:
At this time I am working out a combination of "aftermarket" screws along with plastic or rubber washers that should serve as a replacement.
Prolly no help in this instance, but,
Fastenal.
Got one here in town, they're grrrreat!
You know it's a total embarrassment to me that this is taking so long!
Anyway, now that I have some much-needed time off, getting this done will be a priority.
Here are the screws that vex me. It's really the washers that are difficult, because they're meant to grab onto the metal edges of the hard drive brackets:
Through Fastenal and research, I found out that your standard hard drive screw is a #6-32:
the #6 indicating the girth of your screw, at .1380 inches. And 32 indicating 32 threads per inch.
Your standard hard drive screw is either .15" or .25" After some research, I found that Dell specifies that the screws above are "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws". (They have specified the depth in decimal fractions of an inch.)
If you Google "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws" you will find that the top results are all Dell-related. Because they are all included on the list of parts you get when you buy a hard drive from Dell.
The stinkin' bastards, creating a solution that's not industry standard, and then getting every ounce of profit they can from their enterprise customers. Oh I'm used to it, this is how they make money etc, but you have to pay twice the amount at Dell buying a hard drive that will be used for these servers.
So here are the Dell hard drive brackets, and you can see where the rubber washer thingie - not really a washer, it's meant to slide into the bracket and hold the drive in place:
And the brackets then fit neatly into the Dell servers. Which we want to be a solution that will last a decade. So we don't want to just put layers of duct tape in there.
I have four of the screws, so maybe the answer is just to buy 6-32 3/8" screws at Fastenal. They don't have to be Zinc Indented Hex Washer-head Phillips Machine Screws, but that would be nice. And then maybe I could carve out the right size of rubber to just sit around the screw and keep it in place.
If anyone has any better ideas... remember when thinking about this, vibration is our enemy. It can lower the life of the hard drive, it can weaken the SATA connector, all kinds of shit can go wrong.
vibration may be your enemy, but the hard drives are likely to be vibrating on their own. the only other moving piece is the family of fans that lives in the server, right? isolating them would help too.
I have a couple local places that have METRIC F*CKTONS of crap like this, but I can't get there today, sorry. Next time I'm in that neighborhood, I'll look around. I should probably have your phone number or something to contact you immediately, because I'd be happy to get the parts for you here. The place I have in mind is called
REPC, they recycle pcs and related gear, including rack mount enterprise style stuff like this. I wonder if you called them if they could help.
Screw that. I'm calling them now.
Maybe one of those putty products that hardens into rubber or silicone when baked? Like
Sugru?
Dell customer support technician online now looking for that part.
do you have a part number I could send him to fetch?
Do you have a place that sells rubber/silicone hoses handy? I've made po man's grommets/rubber washers from an appropriately sized hose end a few times.
Dell customer support technician online now looking for that part.
do you have a part number I could send him to fetch?
chat session finished.
I discovered that the part number for the screw is R9445. They cost two bucks each. How many do you need? The fellow sent me this picture of the screw. [ATTACH]43804[/ATTACH]
I said, what about the washer/grommet? He said the screws would work without them. UT, what do you think?
That is not the screw. Compare to my image above. In mine, half the screw is not threaded.
And it's really the washers that are needed.
I feel for you man. The chat people are pretty useless.
Might I add thanks for the effort!
you're welcome.
about the screw in teh picture from the tech. Do you think that screw would work with just the flat low profile head of the screw snugging up to the narrow end of the keyhole on the enclosure? giving a very nearly flush profile to the whole assembly?
I don't know, I'm not there. Yes, I can see that the screws are substantially different. but I can't tell if that difference is unimportant for holding the drive in the enclosure. That's your call.
about the screws.
you said 6-32 was the size of the screw. Ok, so any 6-32 screw will fit properly? And the third value was the length of the screw, right? so, 0.15" long or 0.25" long, but Dell specifies 0.225" long, is that correct?
Why not get the 0.25" and either washer up the head or nip off the leading threads by the amount req?
As for the grommet, didja look at the other long image link I posted? it looks like they had some rubber grommets of exactly the same shape you show in your post.
Yes, if we can find the right grommet, I can just order
#6-32x3/8" Zinc Indented Hex Washer Head Phillips Machine Screws at Fastenal, and put the grommet on that.
Dell's spec may have been to use with a different hard drive rail that they offer in other configurations. These screws really are 3/8".
The word "grommet" may be the key... I didn't think of it as a grommet but that's clearly what it is.
What you have is a shoulder bolt, it's only threaded part way either to keep it from going too deep,and hitting something it shouldn't, or to keep from squeezing something too tight... or both.
The bracket shows a big hole Siamese with a little hole. logic would dictate you pop the screw/plastic thingy, into the big hole and slide the sucker over to the small hole, easy peazy. But, if you look at the bracket, each end would have to slide in the opposite direction. Crap. That tells me maybe the Siamese holes are for two different applications. Looks like the small holes are what fits your stuff.
6-32 is as common as stars in the sky, so are rubber grommets, I've got a shitload of both. Are you going to be home tomorrow?
I think what happens is, you slide the grommets in from the big hole, then slide them over into the little hole. Then you put your drive into place, and then put the 6-32 3/8" through the inner grommet hole, into the hard drive.
I will be home tomorrow morning, waking up around 9, tomorrow afternoon I may go out for errands and whatnot, and then away in the evening. Thank you.
Those are perfect, unfortunately they are manufacturers and don't give any retail links. :(
OKAY! Thanks to a visit from xoB and his handy coffee can of grommets and screws, both disk drives are now mounted in the server!! Thanks xoB!!! :)
Aaaaaaaand it doesn't boot. :(
Back to the documentation...
OH! It doesn't boot because the monitor doesn't find it when auto-configuring which input it thinks is "on"
Replace monitor, system boots! Starting configuration.
Always another hitch dep't. Or rather, always the *next* hitch*, because getting these things done is simply hitch after hitch.
I want to run the two drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirroring), and the system BIOS has allowed me to create a "virtual disk" showing both drives as one single drive, in hardware.
Unfortunately the first choice of operating systems, Centos, does not recognize the hardware disk controller's wishes and wants to install to the physical disks. If we were lazy, we'd just give up and forget the RAID idea. But we're not, so the project stops for the day with more research is needed.
I expect it will be a case of getting the controller's drivers into the mix as a part of the installation process.
Why cant I get just one screw. Believe me I know what to do....
Ah. The PERC 100 RAID controller only works under Windows.
dammit gaw dammit
Very well, we must proceed with SOFTWARE RAID. Less than ideal... but screw it, we must proceed.
OKAY! Thanks to a visit from xoB and his handy coffee can of grommets and screws, both disk drives are now mounted in the server!! Thanks xoB!!! :)
Aaaaaaaand it doesn't boot. :(
Back to the documentation...
That's why I left as soon as the screwing was done, I don't do kinky booting stuff... unless maybe if you get me drunk first. :haha:
I have a margarita here with your goddamn name on it. Also a small letter sized package, no ricin/anthrax/cooties though. Come on over and get them both.
You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? :haha:
I'm aiming for Sunday for server installation day. Don't know if it'll make it. This installation has been harder than it should be!
The following will be Greek to 100% of you, but I know you wanted to read about it!
I chose CentOS for a Linux distribution because it supports long term security updates. The installation has not gone perfectly so far. Because this server doesn't come with a DVD drive, I decided to try booting it from USB flash drive, and the details for setting that up are pretty arcane.
(Here it sits on my coffee table, where I had to put it in order to get to a wired ethernet connection, since my router is in my living room and I only had a 10 foot cable. The gibberish on the screen is part of me trying to solve the Flash drive boot problem in longhand.)
It's been many hours trying to convince the system that it should install, because the point where it generally fails is about 15 minutes in, with a lot of keyboard and mouse input needed to get there.
I may try setting up a Windows-based PXE boot which can install software over my local intarwebs. Or I may see if the system can boot from a USB DVD drive. I dunno let's see.
Urrgh. Good luck... my experience is, if it doesn't like a USB flash drive, it won't like the USB external drive.
Well actually the external DVD is working! The server BIOS picked it up as an external DVD and treated it differently than just another drive. That's what got in the way of the flash install.
Good to know I'm part of the 100% for a change
It's installed and boots. This pretty much guarantees installation Sunday, and all I have to do in the meantime is... uh... migrate everything Cellar-related with all necessary network configurations to this server, and then it'll be ready to not only slide in place in the cage, but also become the actual Cellar server.
And then the database server work begins!
Oh. Waitaminute, I don't like this default partitioning scheme at all!
*fume* *fume*
The Cellar: Are You Being Served?
The first server is in the cage in Wilmington, and is live on the Internet, but I haven't set it up to manage cellar.org yet. That is tonight or, more likely, tomorrow as the final configuration is done.
You won't need to worry about any downtime... once it's ready, I'll just tell the Internet about it, and you'll all gradually shift to the new system.
Good job honey! Did it take long?
Yah it took about 45 minutes and that included whining because the monitor that didn't work at home also didn't work in the cage. I had to run up to the car and get the other monitor.
OK! It looks like it's be a little while longer, because the Cellar code is for the version of PHP on the current system.
This MAY mean that we have to go to an entirely different version of the forum software before moving! But don't panic just yet.
Thanks for all your hard work, Tony. You're awesome.
:thumb2: ~it is my humblest pleasure~ :thumb2:
I was speaking too soon then, and I think it *may* be working just fine and you may be reading this from the new server.
You ARE! You are reading this from the new server.
You will find that the system is a tad more responsive. A lot of how responsive the Cellar seems to be is due to the network; a little is due to how fast and/or crowded the server is at any particular time.
We are still using the old database server, and still on my plate is setting up one or both of the remaining servers (were you keeping score?) to do that duty. I want the Dell 2950 to be the database server because it can have up to 6 disks in it. The remaining Dell 210 can be a backup to the main server.
Because we are still using the old database server, the Cellar will still be a little unresponsive overnight EST when the system is being backed up.
So far things are going great! Except for at about 2am EST, you will find the site more responsive. The Chinese spammers are still trying to register accounts, and this is about half the activity on the server, and it is happily handling the activity.
[SIZE="5"]**APPLAUSE**[/SIZE]
Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems faster. Doing some administrative stuff, like seeing the currently active users, was painfully slow before.
Brilliant Tony! You know your shit sir.
tw knows his shit, I only know Linux.
Outstanding. Wish I knew you were down this way, we could have gotten breakfast lunch or dinner depending. Perhaps next time. Seriously from your place to Wilmo, you are within 200yds of my place.
You drove way past me. I'll correct to you were within a few miles of my house as you drove down 95. But DE/PA Ave is still only 15 mins from me and close to where my GF works. I'm in that area often. Were you near the Lexus dealer by chance? I had a consult with someone there last week. And was back again when my parents bought a new car. Also, the Union street Ale house is right there and a great place to grab a bite.
ETA - I'm closer to the rt92 exit.
J lives down on the waterfront, I'm down there alla time now.
Seriously, we NEED to do lunch soon. Well after my monthly event on Wed. But later this week or early next week. Lets make it happen. Maybe at the Union Street Grill.
The screw you picture is most likely the one for POWEREDGE servers.
Looks like the ones in our poweredge. Those are described by Dell on the delivery receipt as 6-32X0.225 philips head screws.
During the THAILAND FLOODS and resulting DRIVE SHORTAGE we had a member of a RAID fail and Dell could only offer 90 day warranty "refurbished" used drives for something in the neighborhood of $600.00 each. I went outside and found some RE4 drives for <$150 but needed extra screws to mount to perform the procedures of imaging to new array instead of subbing in different type to existing.
I ended up buying some HOT SWAP drive caddies from eBay for $12.00 that included those screws. Looks like I only paid $4.00 for the caddy that does not fit my server to get the $8.00 worth of screws I needed.
chat session finished.
I discovered that the part number for the screw is R9445. They cost two bucks each. How many do you need? The fellow sent me this picture of the screw. [ATTACH]43804[/ATTACH]
I said, what about the washer/grommet? He said the screws would work without them. UT, what do you think?
$600.00 each. I went outside and found some RE4 drives for <$150
The stinkin' bastards, creating a solution that's not industry standard, and then getting every ounce of profit they can from their enterprise customers. Oh I'm used to it, this is how they make money etc, but you have to pay twice the amount at Dell buying a hard drive that will be used for these servers.
Twice the amount... sometimes four times the amount. Thanks for commiserating cobeal!
I have been putting off the database server:
My big client, who is paying for much of the costs of the cage where the servers live, is getting flaky. They may end their project. If they do, we will have to leave the cage and return to standard co-location.
If that happens, we will have to put everything on one server to save costs, and discard the idea of having a separate database server.
That may have to happen anyway. The tip mug has not been filled in many moons and things are going to have to change. (
I assume that is my fault, for being ornery and driving people away, but whatever.)
You're a pantywaist. [SIZE="5"]I[/SIZE] can drive more people away, any day.
My big client has renewed their commitment to the cage. It's good news!
The DB server goes in Sunday. This will lead to a bit of down time. I expect to start at about 10pm EST.
Yay! (Not because of the downtime, but because of the cage renewal. Two servers enter, one server leaves!!)
The server move did not happen last night as I was busy with other things and had driven too much already! It will happen this upcoming week.
This (DB server switchover) happened months ago and I only just now remembered to mention it!
But it was a good thing because the OLD server, which I'd been using for backup, just failed in the same way the original Cellar server did.
:thumb:
Long live the Cellar!
Tony you are the Master, I was totally unaware of the change over.
ALL HAIL THE TOAD!!!