Cellar servers replacement project thread

[Undertoad]

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%.

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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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[BigV]

I like this thread.

[zippyt]

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

[BigV]

Dell Servers, Storage and Networking

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by zippyt

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.

[BigV]

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.

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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.

[BigV]

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.

[Undertoad]

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.

[BigV]

do you have the server make and model settled then?

dell poweredge 2950? a 2U