Building New Servers - Drive Setup
Oct 4, 2009
We're building a bunch of new servers (as I mentioned in another thread). What do you guys think is the best drive layout? Traditionally we just have the entire 4-6 drives in a RAID 5, but now I'm wondering if it makes sense to have a separate OS drive, and then the rest in a raid 5?
On a side note, we need a giant ~2TB-3TB partition on these boxes, that's why we go with the multi-drive raid setup. Thoughts? I know it was customary to have a separate OS drive back in the day (I remember having WD raptor's for that), but now when the WD Black-edition (which we'll be using for the raid setup) are as fast as the raptor's, is it even worth it?
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Feb 13, 2007
to build two 1u rackmount servers, and colocate them to a UK datacentre. Nothing uber spec, just need uber redundancy. One box will be Linux (CentOS or Arch), and the other will be Windows 2003.
They will be webservers, with DNS, MySQL, SMTP and POP3/IMAP services.
Having trawled through google, and loads of junk and seriously out of date websites, I am still no further in my research to find a decent hardware manufacturer, and a UK source to buy the hardware from.
I have seen a few good pages, but there is never any prices on these sites.
BTW. I want to avoid DELL completely, I have had so many problems with Dell before, and if something goes wrong they won't sell you the part to fix it, and charge insane amounts to fix it. Also their configurators are a con, they give you a basic setup to start with for quite cheap - and if you upgrade it you pay the more than the retail amount for the upgraded part and you don't get the part you are replacing it with that you have already paid for in the base price.
Either way, looking to buy the components separately, so the can be upgraded/replaced easily.
For both servers I am looking for:
- redundant hotswappable PSUs, preferably front access, but with power into the back (2)
- redundant nic
- hardware RAID controller (mirror or raid5)
- hotswappable drives (2+)
- dualcore cpu
- hardware for serial terminal access (remote access incase system does not boot, or has a problem booting into the OS)
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May 25, 2007
I am currently in the process of upgrading my web/mysql server due to heavy loads and io waits and have some questions. I am trying to be cost efficient but at the same time do not want to purchase something that will be either inadequate or difficult to upgrade in the future. I hope you can provide me with some guidance.
This server is a Centos Linux box, running both apache and mysql. The current usage on the box is:
Mysql Stats:
50 mysql queries per second
With a ratio of read to write of 2:1
Reads are about 65 MB per hour and writes are around 32 MB per hour.
Apache stats:
35 requests per sec
The two issues that I am unsure of are:
- Whether or not i should go with Raid-1 or Raid-5
- Whether or not I should use Sata Raptor drives or SAS drives.
In either configuration I will use a dedicated Raid controller. If I went with SATA, it would be a 3ware 9650SE-4LPML card. If I went with SAS, I was looking at the Adaptec 3405 controller.
Originally, I was going to use 3 x 74GB Seagate Cheetah 15.4K SAS drives in a Raid-5 config. After more reading, I learned that raid-5 has a high write overhead. Though read is definitely more important based on my stats, I don't want to lose performance in my writes either. With this in mind, I looked into doing Raid-1 instead.
I came up with these choices:
- Raid-1 - 2 x Seagate ST373455SS Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 SAS. HDs & controller costs are $940.
- Raid-1 - 2 x WD Raptor 74GB 10K SATA 150. HDs & controller costs are $652.
- Raid-5 - 3 x Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 ST336754SS 36.7GB. HDs & controller costs are $869.
- Raid-5 - 3 x WD Raptor 36GB 10K SATA 150. HDs & controller costs are $631.
As you can see we are not looking at huge differences in price, so I would be up for any of these options if I could just determine which would give me the best performance. I also know that I should have a 4th hotspare drive, but will buy that later down the road to ease cash flow in the beginning. If I went the SATA route, I would buy the 4th immediately.
From what I can tell, both configs provide the same redundancy, but are there any major performance considerations I should take? From what I have read, scsi/sas can enable database applications to perform better do to a lot of small and random reads and writes?
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Oct 28, 2009
Which RAID level should I chose for an 8 drive setup? It is going to be a R1Soft server.
Should I get RAID 5, 6, 10, or a different level?
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Apr 5, 2009
For a Vbulletin forum with up to 200 users online (only) but growing nicely and I want to be set for quite a while:
I am going to use Nginx, XCache, PHP-FPM, FreeBSD, Gzip
Currently using ~55 GB transfer with mod_deflate, all with dynamic traffic, little bits and pieces, no bigger files.
I want to be able to push 500 GB transfer or so this way, or ~ 1000 users online, many searches from non-registered users, too
I am looking at
Q9550, 8GB, 4x73 SAS 10k Raid-10, $200 Webnx
or
i7 920, 12GB, 4x73 SAS 15k Raid-10, $250 Webnx
or
X3220, 8GB, X25-E SSD Intel, $300 Softlayer
Am I too concerned about disk I/O? Should I save some money and settle for a 2xSATA Raid-1.
Databases are < 2GB and would fit into the RAM
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Apr 15, 2008
I recently build a server with Asus M2N-MX SE motherboard and SuperMicro 14" mini 1u. On the back of the Asus M2N-MX SE manual. it said for RAID driver, i need to create it from the included CD and use a floppy disk. my question is how can i do it without a floppy disk? i have an external DVD-burner that i hook up to usb to install the OS. Is it possible to use a cd to install the driver when i press f6 during Windows2003 installation?
Is it worth the effort to setup RAID 1? I have two Maxtor 500GB SATA disks and using RAID 1 seem to reduce one disk and leave me with 500GB worth of space and is the onboard Nvidia RAID trust worthy? because it said due to chipset limitation, the SATA ports supported by the Nvidia chipset doesn't support Serial Optical disk drives (Serial ODD).
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Feb 8, 2008
I'm about to purchase a 2nd server to be used as a database/app server alongside my current server (of which will be the web server).
I wish to use 2 x 146GB 10K SCSI hard disks (in RAID 1) on the database server, but will be keeping 2 x 320GB SATAII 16M in RAID 1 on the web server. Will the SATA hard disks affect the performance / effectiveness of the SCSI disks or will I benefit from SCSI even though they're only in the database server?
Also, I'm going for 10K hard disks over 15K because they $20 per month cheaper and it's already expensive ($150 p/m for the two 10K or $170 p/m for 2 x 15k). Taking into account the already hefty price, is it worth the extra for 15K?
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Oct 21, 2014
Not sure if I labeled that correctly, but I am looking to setup a multi-server where I offer a cloud ssd hosting plan, and sata hosting plan. The current setup has ssd hosting, but id like to add another ip address, as well as its hard drive to host other websites on that specific server, which is sata based.
For example, I add a domain to my plesk 12 admin account and choose the added Ip address (the sata based one), where it points to that server to access the files for that specific website.
At the moment, cloudflare handles all of my dns settings.. but I am totally lost on how this needs to be setup and if I am required to purchase another plesk license. I am trying to avoid purchasing another plesk license and having to setup a whole new plesk installation just to do this.. This is a vps by the way, not a dedicated server...
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Feb 4, 2008
is it possible for me to access my servers hard drive in the same way I would with any other drive on my computer? Kind of like with ssh but in a file directory instead of a command line.
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Dec 26, 2007
Did anyone see that anywhere?
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Nov 23, 2007
I know this is kids stuff to you guys but i wanna verify how to that correctly.
I have a dedicated server with cpanel. So i setup nameservers there. like ns1.ABC.com and ns2.ABC.com
So now i wanna host ABC.com in that server. My registrar is Godaddy.
So how to setup at godaddy? can anyone guide me.
Is it like make hosts like ns1 and ns2 and put the IPs from the server in the fileds?
Then i have to put the nameservers fileds also ns1.abc.com and ns2.abc.com too. Or just making ns1 and ns2 hosts enough?
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Apr 8, 2008
I have 2 servers. How do I setup the DSN for these 2 servers with my domain? For example, I have domain "mydomain.com" and server1 and server2. I want
ns1.mydomain.com, ns2.mydomain.com --> server1
ns3.mydomain.com, ns4.mydomain.com --> server2
Both server installed cPanel/WHM.
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Jul 9, 2008
We are currently looking into getting a new setup to serve our online store, and I would be thankful for feedback as to which servers to choose.
Today almost the entire store is on a single three year old dual proc/dual core server (4 gb ram, RAID5) that is beginning to get overloaded. (There is also a simpler secondary server that serves some static content and does some cron jobs.)
The system is a in-house developed LAMP (where the P is mod_perl/Mason). The database is rather large, two tables with 2-6 million rows are hit multiple times on most public pages - these grow with ~10% per year. Several other often-used tables are in the few-hundred thousand to a million rows, also continuously growing.
We anticipate rapid sales/visit growth over the next couple of years (a good day today is 6000-8000 visits), so I'm thinking of separating the database and web server. The most likely hosting candidate right now is Softlayer's WDC data center (we are located in Europe).
With that background, does this sound like an adequate setup:
Database server
Dual Xeon 5430 - 2.66GHz
8GB ram
RAIDed 3x73GB (or possibly 147GB) (15k rpm). I'm thinking RAID1? The big tables are not written to too much during the day, so read performance is more important than writing.
Web server
This (these) would be serving the Apache/mod_perl part of the system. Some static content (images and some PDFs) unless we put them on a separate server (all static content are placed in a single folder so it would be easy to do a mod_rewrite to an image server).
Dual Xeon 5050 or 7320
4GB ram
2x73GB (SCSI 10k rpm) RAID1
I don't think we need to load balance between two web servers from the beginning but that is something we will keep in mind (and hopefully have to do at some point). Are the two configurations sane (or is one overkill compared to the other)? Generally, how many web servers can a single database server serve? Email is handled separately (Google Apps). I estimate our budget to not more than $1000-1500 a month (if we go with Softlayer we will most likely use some other services such as firewalls, SAN and so on).
We currently use Suse, I have previously used RedHat on personal servers at ThePlanet. Is RedHat 4 32-bit a sensible choice? I have some experience with CPanel so we would most likely use that.
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Jul 7, 2009
How do I setup a site to use two servers? One as a mysql server and the other as a web server.
At the moment I have the site on one server. When I get the second server what steps do I need to take to make this possible?
How do I secure the mysql server to only allow the web server to connect to it?
Do I need a control panel (i.e. cPanel) software on the mysql server?
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Jun 22, 2008
I have a server at volumedrive it has cpanel and whm installed etc I am trying to setup the name servers but everytime it fails is there something that I might be missing?
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Sep 21, 2007
some setup recommendations as I feel I have outgrown my current server.
I have two websites:
#1 is a busy vBulletin based forum with 42,000 members.
#2 is a website with Wordpress and Vbulletin installed (though the forum is nowhere near as busy as the first site) and gets roughly 2000 uniques a day.
When site #2 gets a good surge of visitors from offline media or a large site, site #1 will die first with the "mysql error: too many connections" error and site #2 will take a very very long time to load.
For every other day, the load is quite low, nearly always under 1.50.
The current server that both sites reside on has the following specs:
Quote:
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 15
model : 2
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 2667.540
cache size : 512 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe cid xtpr
bogomips : 5339.18
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1003 484 519 0 3 192
-/+ buffers/cache: 288 715
Swap: 2047 25 2022
What sort of setup would be best for me?
A files server and a sql server?
A server for site #1 and another for site #2?
A single, more powerful server?
Or something else you recommend?
Also, for the setup you do recommend, can you recommend a hosting company that is reliable and can do it for a good price?
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Sep 22, 2008
what is the setup time of leaseweb servers after payment?
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Jan 13, 2009
We have two in-house servers, one is hosting our public web server. The other one was just purchased to host a mirror of the production server (as a backup). The site is protected by an SSL cert... my question is how do i set up the server(s) so if/when the backup server needs to be switched into produciton, the SSL cert will transition flawlessly?
They are both apache 2 servers.
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Jan 26, 2007
1- i did Os Reload with new Hard drive for "home"
2- data "backups" drive lost
3- replaced the old home drive as "/old drive"
4- " /old drive " is now the secondry drive in my server and it has the all sites usres and evry thing
5- what i need , to trasfer, copy this sites from " /old drive " to "home"
but data center said
The /olddrive/home directory contains the contents that were previously in the /home directory. You can copy files from this directory to any other directory on your server.
The command to copy files in the UNIX environment is the "cp" command.
The user directories in /olddrive/home directory contain the web page files for the users. However, simply copying the contents over will not recreate the users or domain entries in DNS/httpd. If you wish these back you will need to recreate them manually or restore them from backups.
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Feb 16, 2007
Primary drive (centos/cpanel) is corrupt
The server is displaying these errors when I tried to do an FSCK:
Bad inode IO
ext3-fs error (device(8,3)) IO Failure
I am having a new primary installed and old primary set as 2nd drive. I need to recover the cpanel domain accounts from this 2nd drive after I mount it with the method below:
mkdir /backup
mount /dev/sdb1 /backup
However, how do I actually recover these accounts in an automated process via whm? I've done this before with the same matter (corrupt primary drive, mount as 2nd, etc) but cannot exactly remember the proper steps.
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Dec 28, 2007
I just purchased a brand new 10K 150GB drive. How can I take an exact copy of my current drive and transfer everything over to the new drive? I think I need to create a snapshop, or mirror it somehow.
What software will do this? I was told trueimage, but its very pricy, is there anything else?
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Jul 9, 2007
I have a dedicated box and I started getting Input/output errors today.
I tried:
# fsck
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/hda2: recovering journal
fsck.ext3: unable to set superblock flags on /dev/hda2
then I tried:
# fsck -a -t ext3 /dev/hda2
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/hda2: recovering journal
fsck.ext3: unable to set superblock flags on /dev/hda2
My data is backed up, so was going to ask for a reimage, but is this an indication of bad hardware? Should I ask for a replacement drive? Is there anything else I should try on my own before going to the host?
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Mar 29, 2008
I run a large service on 2 machines (we're talking 8x2.66Ghz processing power, 4-6GB ram, etc), however we are thinking about creating a node/clustered setup to help spread the load, bandwidth, mysql (having one server for hundreds of thousands of databases is not wise it seems :p), diskspace etc. Lots of machines just seems to be a cheaper and more powerful option.
Would you advise going with lots of lower end machines, or just a few mid-range machines.
Here is what I propose:
3 of these
Dual Xeon 3GHZ Dual-Core (4x3GHz)
3GB RAM
500GB Sata Drive
4000 GB Bandwidth
100mbit
or
4 of these
XEON X3220 QUAD CORE 2.4GHZ 1066FSB
2GB DDR2 RAM (Upgradeable)
250GB HDD
2000GB Bandwidth
100mbit
or
7 of these
Dual Xeon 3.06 Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
250GB SATA
2000GB BW/MONTH
100mbit
All of the above are roughly similar prices in total.
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Mar 24, 2008
I've been running a niche hosting business (one man show) for about 6 months now and so far I've learnt the basics of the hosting business. In fact I'm quite successful too, with good profits right from the first month. I know a bit of server admin and manage my own servers.
However, now I plan to start general shared hosting business and have decided to own my hardware and colocate it at a DC. (I'm not located in the US; the DC owner is my friend and would receive the hardware and set it up for me.)
The box would cater to general shared webhosting needs with cPanel (I don't like it but the market does )
Here's what I'm planning to go for...please put in your valuable inputs.
$300 for 1x SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DCL-I ATX Mainboard
$380 for 2x Kingston 4GB(2x2GB) KVR667D2D4F5K2/4G RAM
$475 for 2x Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown Quad Core 2Ghz.
$240 for 2x WD Caviar RE2 WD5001ABYS 500GB SATA2 HDD
$250 for 1x Supermicro CSE-811T-420B 1U Chassis
100Mbps port, CentOS 5.latest 64bit, cPanel.
So, to sum up... 8x2Ghz CPU, 8GB RAM, 500GB SATA RAID system to start with.
I'm open to all suggestions and would appreciate valuable advice etc. from experienced people. I'd like to ensure full hardware/software compatibility and maximum stability.
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Oct 9, 2009
How would I go about building an ostemplate?
I want to build one running Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and ISPConfig on openvz
Could I pretty much start with the Ubuntu 8.04 minimal install and then run the ispconfig installation [url]
and then make an ostemplate out of that?
The part that concerns me is will the hostname autopopulate based on what is setup during the build of the vm?
What about the SSL info it asks me for during the install, should I just enter something generic for that or?
Has anyone else done this?
I don't want hostinabox to be the only image with a control panel
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Mar 24, 2009
I am thinking about buying this processor and building a server with it. This processor is very affordable for me but I am wondering what kind of server I should run it as? Do you think the processor would be able to handle a heavy DDoS attack and act as a good firewall?
Let me know, here's the processor I want to build the server with:
[url]
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May 18, 2009
Does anyone know why companies like Level3/Yipes/Abovenet/Global Crossing don't make their on-net building list available readily? Cogent/Zayo/etc have it listed right on their website....Zayo even gives you this downloadable KMZ file for Google Earth.
I'm working with a few clients who run their own data center/web hosting facilities and are looking at new spaces in various Class A office buildings. Obviously, I can go around and call all the providers, but it becomes a voicemail game.
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Nov 3, 2009
I am working on building another hosting companies which I will be hosting VPSs as well.
I am asking this from a customers opion.
with each plan should it be an = shared amount of the processor or should each person have a dedicated amount? For example say you got duel quadcore processors running 3ghz which would = like 24ghz total correct? Say you have 16 VPS on 1 server each getting roughly 1.5Ghz.
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Feb 2, 2008
We currently have a few racks within a UK Datacentre and unfortunately its filling up quicker and quicker by the day.
When we contacted our account manager during the week for another rack we were told that there is less than 5 racks left. Saying that these new racks came with +20% increase on our normal costs plus a £800 setup fee. While I have no complaints with the price going up for the rack (as its the same in any data centre when it gets full) I am starting to think that if we (as a company) maybe benefit more to converting an office into a data suite and getting suitable fibre to the building.
One reason why I am calling this a data suite and not a data centre is it wont have the benefits of a backup generator and fire suppression system as costs would outway the benefits (at the moment anyway). We are looking to only have around 4/8 racks in this data suite with none of the services being hosted business critical.
At the moment our current DC is around 100 miles from me so when we looked at the location we found that having one closer to our office and my home allot easier/beneficial. Next option was is there affordable fibre access available and yes there is. There was many sets of offices and industrial sites which already had fibre access to the doors with many suppliers available such as the national fibre grid (BT), Virgin Media Backhaul and Global Crossing (waiting to be confirmed on GC to see if its theirs or BTs). Least that saves the cost of the expensive last miles from the POP.
Either way the fibre we would be using would be used to back haul our connection to a London DC to plug into our network. Over the last week I have been looking at possible locations, costs, quotes etc to see what I can work with. I am just wondering if anyone else has done something similar (as in setting up a few racks away from the DC) and how did it turn out?
One worry I did worry about is losing the data centres remote hands when things go really wrong and say a technician is unavailable to go to the suite. All our servers are hooked up to KVMs and Reboot racks so if something does go wrong (software wise) we can cope but the thought does linger over me slightly.
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Oct 17, 2009
building a SeedBox with a $35,000 USD Budget
how to build one of these bad boys. While staying under my budget.
I want to build a top of the line SeedBox that can handle 100 users. I need help on what kind of software and hardware I need with prices. I want this to be able to hold a 10Gbits line. (Or 10 1Gbits lines) And security stuff I need like firewall or virus scanner stuff. And Back-Up type stuff like in case of a HD Crash. And how to get 100 different IP addresses.
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Oct 31, 2009
I am planing on building a small data center either in Waterloo, Ontario or in the surrounding area of Toronto, Ontario.
My questions:
1.) Is Waterloo a good area to build a data center? I know its a technology area but I havent seen much data centers from the area. And are there any bandwidth providers in the area?
2.) Anyone know a good place in the surrounding area of Toronto ontario where fiber lines will be easy to bring in? Mostly looking for something on the edge of the city, planing of purchasing my own land and a place where it will be easy to expand. Right now looking Bolton area or Brampton
3.) What bandwidth providers can be found in these areas? Need someone who can offer bandwidth for cheap like the do in the states so I can offer my customers cheap bandwidth also.
4.) If I open a data center in Waterloo ontario do you guys think there will be a good demand for colocation there?
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