# FA Server -- Inside the Hosting Facility



## Dragoneer (Mar 13, 2006)

Our server is currently housed at the Level 3 facility just outside of New York city. Biometrics and RF ID tags protect the server facility entrance.






Hundreds upon hundreds of servers occupy the incredibly loud facility, cooled by a half a dozen powerful air conditioners.






Locker after locker housing servers and systems, ranging from simple websites to massive commerce networks.






Our server, sittin' on the bottom... unaware that I was soon about to grab it and take it home.






The building has incredibly efficient cable management. =D Gotta love it.






This is the backside of our cabinet. FA's primary server is on the bottom. FA's temp server can be seen, second from the top with the two spiral cooling fans. Lots of various systems, many of which will remain un-named.






The server sitting in my home office. It's not been acting too well, and needs to be fixed. I'm going to be operating on the system in an attempt to convince it that performance and stability is, by no means, a bad thing. Once we get the main system up and running the site's bottlenecks will vanish entirely.














I'm currently working on our main system and trying to find out why it's not working as it should be. My primary goal is ensuring this site is as fast and efficient as possible. More updates on the server will follow.


----------



## Torin_Darkflight (Mar 13, 2006)

Nice pictures, quite informative. Damn, I wish I had an office as nice as yours. I'm still waiting for my brother to come get the rest of his crap out of mine (It used to be his bedroom).

Anyway, just out of personal curiosity, what's to become of the old server?


----------



## Dragoneer (Mar 13, 2006)

Torin_Darkflight said:
			
		

> Nice pictures, quite informative. Damn, I wish I had an office as nice as yours. I'm still waiting for my brother to come get the rest of his crap out of mine (It used to be his bedroom).
> 
> Anyway, just out of personal curiosity, what's to become of the old server?


http://preyfar.livejournal.com/591116.html?mode=reply

I posted some other pictures of my home office to my LJ. As for the old server, well, that's really up to Gushi. It's his system, and I'm sure he's got other uses planned for it. I have far, far more computers than I really should.


----------



## TORA (Mar 14, 2006)

Very interesting pics, Dragoneer! ROWR.


----------



## Taristin (Mar 14, 2006)

Oooh. Where is this just outside NYC? I live about 20 miles from the Tappan Zee bridge, about ~40 miles from Manhattan. And I didn't know there was a server station nearbye!


----------



## Dragoneer (Mar 14, 2006)

Taristin said:
			
		

> Oooh. Where is this just outside NYC? I live about 20 miles from the Tappan Zee bridge, about ~40 miles from Manhattan. And I didn't know there was a server station nearbye!


It's on the Jersey side by Weehawken. I just took some random pics as I went to pic up the server to take it back for testing.


----------



## Arshes Nei (Mar 14, 2006)

TORA said:
			
		

> Very interesting pics, Dragoneer! ROWR.



On a side note, I don't suppose we can make this into the FA drinking game, where you take a shot everytime TORA uses "ROWR"


----------



## Litre (Mar 14, 2006)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> TORA said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



*dead from poisoning already*


----------



## Taristin (Mar 14, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> Taristin said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ahh. That's about 50-60 miles south... Eenteresting.


----------



## TORA (Mar 14, 2006)

Arshes Nei said:
			
		

> TORA said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Heh. Then you really don't want to see my comments on submissions from FA and Y! ::hands Arshes Nei about 1800 shots:: There you go. ROWR. ::hands Arshes Nei another shot::


----------



## Myr (Mar 14, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> It's on the Jersey side by Weehawken. I just took some random pics as I went to pic up the server to take it back for testing.


Are they hiring?  I really need a summer job in computers since I'm spending all this money on college. I really don't feel like being a manager of a TV store again or doing freelance technology reviews.


----------



## Dragoneer (Mar 14, 2006)

AuroranDragon said:
			
		

> Dragoneer said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I... don't know? You'd have to apply at Level 3 yourself and find out?


----------



## Rukario (Mar 14, 2006)

So many oodles and oodles of wonderful tech and computer and cables and schtuff .. oh my <3.  Mrowl. I could almost fap to those pictures of the server rooms. lol


----------



## yak (Mar 14, 2006)

how much farther is it to the delta labs, dude?  
seriuosly, this place must drain enouth energy to power a small town! i wonder how big is their UPS room.....


----------



## TORA (Mar 14, 2006)

Am I that good that I'm no longer an FA Postwhore, but just ROWR?


----------



## nikuramon (Apr 3, 2006)

More pics like this pls.


----------



## starlite528 (Apr 6, 2006)

It's funny to see a couple of Cobalt Raq's sitting in there.  I have a Raq3 of my own, made and sold long before Sun Microsystems bought them out and destroyed the lineup.


----------



## gushi (Apr 12, 2006)

Actually, the Raq3/4 is a beautiful piece of hardware.  Very self-managing.  Those that you're seeing are actually running RH9, and FC1 (not my favorite option, but I needed a 2.4 kernel).

If you're lucky enough to own a raq4i, they have fairly decent SCSI support, and this allows them to bypass the LBA24 support in the bios that won't let them take drives larger than 100 gigs or so.

Still, those cobalts have a gig of ram, 500Mhz processors, upgraded cooling, and WAY bigger drives than one would ever have thought.


----------



## starlite528 (Apr 14, 2006)

nah, I only have the raq3 (pre-sun).  I *DO* have it running the raq4 software.  I would like to know how to get RH on there.  IIRC upgrading the kernel is a pain.


----------



## Bokracroc (Apr 14, 2006)

It needs more neon  :wink:


----------



## Emerson (Apr 17, 2006)

Dragoneer said:
			
		

> Taristin said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Jersey is my turf. Go away! D:


----------



## gushi (May 12, 2006)

*RE:*



			
				starlite528 said:
			
		

> nah, I only have the raq3 (pre-sun).  I *DO* have it running the raq4 software.  I would like to know how to get RH on there.  IIRC upgrading the kernel is a pain.



Do NOT mess with the kernel:

Here's the instructions I followed, mostly (although I rewrote some of the scripts so the panel buttons worked again).

http://web.nexband.com/

-Gushi


----------

