Forum Specifications

[Blacksheepboy]

Does anyone have any ideas on the Soldat Forums specifications/hardware? I hear forums can be pigs if done without efficiency.

If it comes time, I may look for moderators , though its 'parent' forums is likely to have volunteers.

Edit:

I did some research for a baseline server, and got some nice estimates. $830 starting out, $300 for storage upgrade. I'm pleased. Parts for whoever it interests:

Enterprise HDD
Apparently some well-known little PSU
Xeon M-ATX Motherboard
2U Rack Case
That lovely expensive RAM
Xeon CPU

Upgrade:
Somewhat cheap RAID controller
and another enterprise drive.

I'm only assuming this is appropriate for a small forums, but it sounds approximate. More servers and clusters (hah) may be down the line, (or most likely never).

I have a little 60gb SSD for OS/ease of installation.

[jrgp]

The hardware hosting these forums (as well as a bunch of other soldat/kag related sites) are being under utilized.

- 2xXeon L5320 (so 8 logical cores total)
- 16GB ram
- 4 SAS drives in soft RAID 10
- Supermicro mobo/case

5GB of ram is currently used and system load is at 0.81.

The box is also hosting a bunch of development KAG servers and various tools/services for KAG and it isn't breaking a sweat. Such an upgrade would be a waste of money.

[Blacksheepboy]

Wow, the folks over at the webhosting forums were upselling a lot of things. Well, I guess having this server could have multiple uses.

[jrgp]

Wow, the folks over at the webhosting forums were upselling a lot of things. Well, I guess having this server could have multiple uses.

FLAB has 5 of them just like the specs I mentioned, and he offloads various tasks to each of them. One of them serves as the MySQL server for all of them, for instance.

Additionally, for my servers, I buy premade ones off ebay that companies no longer need hence they sell. Go on ebay and search for things like supermicro 1U or supermicro 32GB of ram or whatever and you'll find a LOT of premade systems with crazy specs for under $400. Quality is great. I've had boxes from ebay for over a year without issues.

Ryan bought 5 of the box I described above (the same ebay sale) after I bought one of them and gave him the power use (amperage).

[Blacksheepboy]

That's humorous.

[jrgp]

That's humorous.

No need to buy new server parts that cost an exorbitant amount of money when you can get them used for a 10th of the cost and in pristine condition. Fact is, a company with a *ton* of servers goes out of business or needs different hardware or outsources work somewhere else, they'll want to get rid of the perfectly working servers as quickly as possible, hence the cheap ebay prices. And with ebay, if you get screwed over there's some degree of buyer protection so there's that as well. I only use newegg when I'm building a normal computer from scratch or need a specific part instead of a premade server.

Got my mac mini i5 (4 logical cores) / 500GB HD off ebay for $490 and bought 16GB ram for it from crucial new for like $100. Comp would have been wayyy more expensive new with little benefit, aside from warranty but whatever.

[Blacksheepboy]

Agree^^

I'll clarify, I never thought about Ebay as a place for buying set up servers. The thought of buying a server with 4 CPUs for under $400 seems humorous (some of the sales are ludicrous, eh it's a bid, but regardless, $400 is theoretically possible).

Breaking things down, it's reasonable I'll need more than one server.

[jrgp]

Agree^^

I'll clarify, I never thought about Ebay as a place for buying set up servers. The thought of buying a server with 4 CPUs for under $400 seems humorous (some of the sales are ludicrous, eh it's a bid, but regardless, $400 is theoretically possible).

Breaking things down, it's reasonable I'll need more than one server.

Not a bid; I only do "buy it now" for servers. The mac mini was a bid though. Felt great winning it because the auction was kinda close.

Moving this thread to the lounge btw as it isn't really relevant to this board anymore.

[Blacksheepboy]

I've done a couple fun bids. I learned some basics about sniping from some Diablo 3 streamers some months back..

Some bids can probably get out of hand, for well-together setups.

Unfortunately many don't support SAS, but I guess there's workarounds (cards/whatever), or I won't be picky. If it comes down to raw efficiency, I'll manage some parts together for SAS/DDR3.

[jrgp]

I've done a couple fun bids. I learned some basics about sniping from some Diablo 3 streamers some months back..

Some bids can probably get out of hand, for well-together setups.

Unfortunately many don't support SAS, but I guess there's workarounds (cards/whatever), or I won't be picky.

Not quite. It's more than just the card supporting SAS, it's the "backplane" as well. (this is the thing that the drives connect to which in tern connects to either the motherboard or a card.

This is an example of a box similar to one I have (the same x7dbu board but different CPUs). It'd be a great server if you snagged it and added drives and maybe upped the ram if needed. That board supports 32GB max. http://www.ebay.com/itm/231059560574?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item35cc39187e

But yeah I can definitely vouch for supermicro hardware. I work in a datacenter as a developer/programmer/sysadmin/etc and most/all of our machines are supermicros or variants of them.

[Blacksheepboy]

Lovely hacky consumer desktop knowledge. Shift isn't so bad though.

Supermicro looked pretty preferable from Newegg reviews.

[jrgp]

Lovely hacky consumer desktop knowledge. Shift isn't so bad though.

Supermicro looked pretty preferable from Newegg reviews.

yeah they're the way to go if you don't want to go with dell/hp/IBM/other major server vendors. IBM may have divested their desktop/consumer computer hardware to Lenovo but they retained their server hardware line, which I think is cool

[Blacksheepboy]

Turns out I'm using two servers for game hosting, and getting a private line. Wonder if I'll break even per month. I can afford to beat the competitors by 50%. Didn't want to make people pay $1 a slot.

Funny thing I don't have to use proper hard drives. I just have two 60gb ssd's, and another server for backup.