As per MM's mention, server!

[FliesLikeABrick]

A lot of people have been asking me about the specs of the server that MM mentioned I will soon be building and managing, so I took the time to write up a summary of what it is used for and what the specs will be.  A lot of the more technically-versed community members have been gaining interest in what my hosting infrastructure is growing up to be like and what hardware I use, and in my constant spirit of being open and helping others learn, I aim to please them

Hopefully these are enough details to whet their appetites, otherwise I'll do my best to answer any questions: http://tns.u13.net/?p=18

[Xxypher]

Brilliant!
This will be great for the communities and servers!

[truup]

One for Michal Marcinkowski, as mentioned in this Soldat Forums news post, and the other as the next step in my hosting endeavors with Lee.

Whos is this Lee? We've got a guy named that in my clan, but im 100% sure its not the same person. :O

Building and managing servers is one of my greatest passions and hobbies, and I am extremely excited to begin work on both of these.

You've got a great (unique too?), pretty expensive, and intresting hobby. I would like to do stuff like this too, but im gonna stick with hosting at my local old machines (running on duron), if at all. No need for faster though (no renting stuff you know, just irssi and apache, ventrilo and soldatserver at most for private use).

For some offtopic, you could set the background color on the site to something brighter, since in my eyes, the text is like.. glowing, so it's hard to read. Not too white though, something to match white text.

Good luck with them, and watch out so you won't break them.

[Xxypher]

I am pretty sure Brick doesn't pay for it all, I know Mike is pitching in money to help.

[FliesLikeABrick]

It says in the post who is paying for what.

Lee is ElephantHunter

edit: Xxypher, Michal != Michael.  Michal isn't supposed to be abbreviated to 'Mike'

[truup]

I am pretty sure Brick doesn't pay for it all, I know Mike is pitching in money to help.

It says in the post who is paying for what.

Yes it does, but I wasn't asking that. The point is, I don't have money to start with, and nobody will pay them either. I just mentioned that the hobby is expensive (I think).

[FliesLikeABrick]

yeah, I was moreso referring to what Xxypher was saying

[Xxypher]

Hmm, I am bad at spelling Michal, always spell Michele, so I use Mike.

[DePhille]

Alright, I still have a few questions though.

Michal mentioned the server will be used for "Soldat related sites". Are these communities such as U13, Fracs, ... ?
If so, I think there should be a selection of who can put their site on it and who can't, kind of like gamespy-planet does. Otherwise the server would quickly get clogged up with forums.
If so, would it be free to host a site on it? Should a user pay according to the specs he needs?
If so, would there be an option to have a small Soldatserver instead of webspace?

If not, then what will exactly be hosted on that server?

I'm not asking these questions for my own benefit, I'm aiming to buy my own dedicated server . I like to experiment with servers too, but unfortunately I'm not the kind of guy that wants to throw a 1000$ onto the table for a server. (let alone that I have 1000$).

I'm pretty sure you won't need any help at all, but in the unlikely case you do, I'd be glad to help.

Grtz, DePhille

[FliesLikeABrick]

Alright, I still have a few questions though.

Michal mentioned the server will be used for "Soldat related sites". Are these communities such as U13, Fracs, ... ?
If so, I think there should be a selection of who can put their site on it and who can't, kind of like gamespy-planet does. Otherwise the server would quickly get clogged up with forums.
If so, would it be free to host a site on it? Should a user pay according to the specs he needs?
If so, would there be an option to have a small Soldatserver instead of webspace?

no

If not, then what will exactly be hosted on that server?

Right now the hosting for Soldat — the official site, forums, lobby server, anti-cheat master server, SVN source code repository, static content hosting, download mirrors, and other parts — are all spread out on different servers with varying performance, reliability, and security. Having a properly built and managed server for Soldat will give it yet another leap in professional feel, as well as give Michal lots of growing room for his future projects.

[truup]

What about software?

[FliesLikeABrick]

What about it?  You mean what will it be running?

[DePhille]

Alright, thanks for clearing that up!

[truup]

What about it?  You mean what will it be running?

Yeah. Linux I guess, but which distribution? Apache for webhosting I guess.

[FliesLikeABrick]

For MM's server and the other one I'm going to be building at the same time, I'm planning to use the following:

• Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn.  64-bit only with no 32 bit libraries unless they end up being needed for something important
• Apache 2.2.3 if I decide to install from APT, or 2.2.4 if I compile from souce (which is what I usually do, but I want to get away from it)
• PHP 5.2.1 or 5.2.3 if I install from source, same as above
• MySQL 5.0.38
• ext3 as the filesystem for / and /home.  I've grown fond of XFS lately and will change to using that for /home if the server ever needs an extra bit of performance, but for now I'd rather have the reliability of ext3.

I can't think of anything else noteworthy right now, but if I do I'll add it to the list.  Questions are still welcome ;)

[truup]

I read from some one year old computermagazine, that 7200rpm is standard speed for hds today. Is 10k rpm kind of standard for servermachines, or is it just to speed up things? I also read that theoretical speed for hdds is around 30-90MBps, while it says:

Data Transfer Rate 320MBps External Maximum Ultra320 SCSI
472Mbps to 944Mbps Internal

for the one you are ordering. Have I messed up bytes with bits, or have I missed something badly?

[FliesLikeABrick]

very good questions

320 MBbs (capital B means Bytes) is the speed of the connection from the hard drive to the SCSI controller.  There are two buses in this particular server, so 4 drives will share each bus.  This means that the combined speed of the 4 drives at any one time cannot exceed 320MB per second. 

The internal speed is 472 to 944 Mbps, megabits.  This is the rate at which the drive operates internally, and is equivalent to 59MB to 118MB per second, depending on things like whether the drive is reading sequentially and other factors that I don't know of.  This is an approximately the maximum speed the drive can ever read at.

7200 is the desktop "standard" though most low-end desktops still have 5400 RPM drives and most laptops are split pretty evenly between 5400 and 7200 RPM.

Many people who build their own servers with IDE or SATA drives still use 7200 RPM drives, but I use 10,000 RPM because it does provide quite a performance boost for the database server and disk-to-disk transfers.  Collectively, this one decision to use 10,000 RPM drives in combination with RAID5 will give the machine a very nice performance boost, as I've found with my other server that matches these. 

SCSI drives perform something called Native Command Queuing, which is fairly easy to explain, but instead I'll link you to the Wikipedia page for it.  this is why SCSI drives have almost always been used in servers and part of the reason they are more expensive.  While you might read that and think "ooh that'll make a difference in my desktop" it sincerely will not.  The extent to which you must read randomly in order to see a performance increase from NCQ is very large, and therefore the benefit is only recognized in server uses.  Even then, many server loads/usages never would benefit from NCQ

It is rare to find 10,000RPM disks in desktops because they get very very hot if you don't have your machine cooled properly, and the disks will die very quickly.  The amount of fans/volume of air required to cool 10,000 RPM drives generates enough noise to make you not want to spend more than an hour or two around the computer, and as a result most data centers are very, very loud.

Even most desktops today that are built with 7200 RPM drives do not cool them properly, which is (this is mostly a guess) the main reason that people suffer disk failures at the rate they do.  Most people who try to build their own very quiet computers do not cool their hard drives properly.

These servers I build have a row of very, very high velocity fans placed behind the hard drives, in front of the motherboard and PSU.  They move HUGE amounts of air, and the drives never get even slightly warm.  For comparison, running a 10,000 RPM drive in a desktop machine with little or no air movement makes the drive hot enough that you don't want to touch it for more than a fraction of a second, it is very uncomfortably hot.

[bja888]

... (capital B means Bytes) ... megabits....

For those of you who don't know. B is not b (bookmark it in case you forget)

I got that posted in my cube cuz I am surrounded by designers.