New Server Hardware For digitalpoint.com

Well, as many know, donations are closed because we reached the goal.

Some of stuff I have in my possession now:

• 1 Server (Xserve G5)
• Service Parts Kit for servers (spare motherboard, power supply, and fans)

Still waiting on:

• 2nd Server (shipped, should be here on the 15th)
• 24-port Gigabit switch (hopefully will be available to order on the 18th)
• More RAM for the servers (bringing them both to 8GB each)

In case anyone is curious why I picked the Xserve machines, it's because they had the best (by far) price to performance ratio of anything I could find. Each server is configured as follows:

• Dual 2.3Ghz G5 processors (64-bit) which yields 35 gigaflops of CPU power
• 1.2 TB of hot swappable hard drive space in RAID-5 for redundancy and speed (800GB useable) yielding disk I/O close to 200MB/sec
• Hardware RAID PCI card
• PCI video card
• Superdrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
• Dual gigabit ethernet ports
• 1 GB RAM (I'm upgrading them to 8GB each)
• All in a 1U rack-mount form factor

Planning on setting up some fun stuff when the 2nd server gets here... things like complete hardware redundancy between both servers with IP failover (servers monitor each other and will take over the other's IP if it's down). This will make it really nice for things like upgrades or anything else that requires a reboot. Zero down time... at least that's the plan.

 

They are going to go to the same data center the existing servers are at. And yes, it's climate controlled.

Environmental:
It's a positive pressure, computer clean room with double filtration of fresh air before entering the center. In addition each air conditioner continuously filters the air within the room. The data center has 60 tons of redundant air conditioning. 6 air conditioning units handling 10 tons of cooling capacity and are independent from other units. Also has dedicated condensing units to make sure humidity is optimal.

Power:
Has redundant battery backup that will condition in-bound electricity. If there is an outage for more than 60 seconds, the diesel generators fire up for power.

Fire:
Uses Inergen, which is an environmentally green, three-dimensional fire suppression agent (basically fills the entire room). It's electrically non-conductive, safe for humans.

Security:
Entry to the data center is controlled by by both a numeric keypad and biometrics (thumbscan).

So it's a pretty good data center.

 

OS X Server (OS X is a BSD variant).

 

The biggest bottleneck right now on the wait times for the keyword tracker is bandwidth (specifically in the mornings) between 12:00 am and 10:00 am (PST). Although that should be upgraded about the same time the new servers go in. There are so many check all threads running in the mornings (everyone checking their ranks for the day) that inbound traffic from Google ends up being a LOT.