# FA Hardware?



## marmelmm (Nov 25, 2007)

I'm curious:  What all is the hardware involved, here?  Perhaps we could take up a collection, buy a backup server which could run whilst tinkering with the new stuff?  Or am I being hopelessly obtuse?  ;?  Wouldn't be the first time.  

-MMM-


----------



## Charem (Nov 25, 2007)

Could all just be digital too.


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

Yeah it would be nice to know more of the technological stuff being used...

Like server platform and characteristics (cpu, hd's, memory, etc etc), networking (switches, internet links, firewalls, etc etc), back up, etc...


----------



## yak (Nov 25, 2007)

DragonTrew said:
			
		

> Yeah it would be nice to know more of the technological stuff being used...
> 
> Like server platform and characteristics (cpu, hd's, memory, etc etc), networking (switches, internet links, firewalls, etc etc), back up, etc...


http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Fur_Affinity#The_hardware


----------



## marmelmm (Nov 25, 2007)

yak said:
			
		

> http://furry.wikia.com/wiki/Fur_Affinity#The_hardware



Bahamut, eh?  Hee!  Someone's been watching Megazone 23.  

-MMM-


----------



## Hellkat (Nov 25, 2007)

Or playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, where the deity of the good dragons is Bahamut, where that of evil is Tiamat. Which was ported to the Final Fantasy series. As if you pay attention there are quite a few DnD monsters that where in the FF series.


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

if we could find away to raise the money, the thing to do would be to get a dedicated server in a datacenter, for example an opteron Barcelona (quad core) with 32gb of ram with serially attatched scsi drives in raid, (drools), that would actually be able to handle on a regular basis the traffic FA gets


----------



## SomeoneRandom (Nov 25, 2007)

Hellkat said:
			
		

> Or playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, where the deity of the good dragons is Bahamut, where that of evil is Tiamat. Which was ported to the Final Fantasy series. As if you pay attention there are quite a few DnD monsters that where in the FF series.



I wouldn't say they were "ported from DnD" but those are off-topic technicalities.

So the question is: Wocha gonna do with Tiamat?


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

yak said:
			
		

> DragonTrew said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oooooooooooook! I didn't knew the wiki actually had some info! thanks for the reply


----------



## Hellkat (Nov 25, 2007)

SomeoneRandom said:
			
		

> I wouldn't say they were "ported from DnD" but those are off-topic technicalities.
> 
> So the question is: Wocha gonna do with Tiamat?



True, but I would imagine that the DnD versions of the two are more familiar to most of the English speaking world than the mythological versions.


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

leeter said:
			
		

> if we could find away to raise the money, the thing to do would be to get a dedicated server in a datacenter, for example an opteron Barcelona (quad core) with 32gb of ram with serially attatched scsi drives in raid, (drools), that would actually be able to handle on a regular basis the traffic FA gets



I would prefer Fibre-Channel instead of SCSI, also it would be nice to have a SAS attached to the servers to provide the storage the site needs... but this costs money and we all don't have it 
I would put the Barcelona to be the database server, and put the two currently serving the http+db in a cluster and put as http only... so 2 servers clustered to serve HTTP, a new one as DB server, and a SAS with fibre-channel and some pretty sweet Terabytes on it... But again: MONEY!!!


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

DragonTrew said:
			
		

> leeter said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



the serially attached scsi is internal, perhaps your thinking of a NAS (Network Attached Storage), SAS is used to get extremely high bandwidth between a board and a disk, i.e. greater than 3gb/s which is the SATA max. Internally fiber would be impractical because of the conversions to and from. I mentioned the SAS because it would be an easy way of helping the database server keep up with latent transactions. Although I agree a multi-sever arrangement would probably be best overall that way the site server is not handling picture requests.


----------



## yak (Nov 25, 2007)

Trust me, if we had money, FA'd have a significantly different hardware running it, and running it in a significantly different way. But we have to work with what we can get.


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

I know, but we can dream, right?


----------



## karoug (Nov 25, 2007)

A TYAN B2932G24W4H server with dual barcelona quad core 1.9ghz (or 1.8HE)  processors, 16GB of memory, two Seagate 72GB SAS drives (Raid 1) on an internal SAS controller, and two 1TB Sata Seagate drives (Raid 1) on an Areca ARC-1220 256MB PCIe SATA controller would run about 4,100.00 USD. (without shipping)

I was somewhat surprised when I tested performance on my servers and the Areca 1110ML and the mirrored 1 Terabyte drives outperformed my Raid 5 array with it's U320 15K RPM drives by about 15%.  The Barcelonas can't really beat my Intel-based development servers yet but I'd think that they would be great for a web server.


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

leeter said:
			
		

> DragonTrew said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oops I meant SAN not SAS sorry for the mistake.

And FIBRE-channel (not fiber-channel  ) is an interface with greater bandwidth (4Gb/s) used on Seagate CheetahÂ® series and some others. There is also a FIBRE-channel card to interconnect the SAN to a server and it uses either copper or fiber...


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

Thats about what I was thinking except perhaps raid 5 or so, that way we'd have more data redundancy


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

DragonTrew said:
			
		

> leeter said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



NICE


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

leeter said:
			
		

> DragonTrew said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Oh yeah!! It's something that requires lots and lots of money though! Perhaps a simple NAS using sata II disks would be more cost-effective hehehehe :lol:


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

True, but not nearly as fun


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

Hahahaha I'll have to agree, those little beasts must be fun to work with.


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

we are such nerds, and enjoying ourselves nonetheless


----------



## sagemane (Nov 25, 2007)

yak said:
			
		

> Trust me, if we had money, FA'd have a significantly different hardware running it, and running it in a significantly different way. But we have to work with what we can get.



After this weekend probably wishing for something with lights out  It must be killer running something for thousands of people with all the service expectations and none of the revenue. Thanks for all the hours the volunteers are putting in over a holiday weekend!

Is there going to be another fund drive coming up, or is this pretty much it for the year? If you guys ever get a budget to set up for high availability, we've just spent the last year at work setting up an alternate data center and making all the servers HA with EqualLogic SAN replication and VMWare VI3 HA and I'd be happy to share our lessons learned. For groups of a few servers with moderate storage it's actually doable for ~$30K now; certainly a lot more than FA has been able to raise so far, but a far cry from when you had to shell out $200K to EMC. Maybe if subscriptions or the like ever happen it could be in the budget. Anyway thanks again for all the hard work!


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 25, 2007)

We aren't nerds, we are people that have the capability of earning lots of money playing with what we like! XD


----------



## leeter (Nov 25, 2007)

True, True


----------



## Dragoneer (Nov 25, 2007)

Hellkat said:
			
		

> Or playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, where the deity of the good dragons is Bahamut, where that of evil is Tiamat. Which was ported to the Final Fantasy series. As if you pay attention there are quite a few DnD monsters that where in the FF series.


It's named after the D&D dragon gods, Tiamat and Bahamut. A third server is in the planning stages which will mirror Bahamut as a fail-safe, redundant server. Data security = good.

Before we can upgrade to that, we're going to need to invest in a switch to handle the multiple server arrays.


----------



## karoug (Nov 25, 2007)

Preyfar said:
			
		

> Before we can upgrade to that, we're going to need to invest in a switch to handle the multiple server arrays.



Are you looking for something like the Cisco CE500G-12TC with 1000bt copper connections and/or were you actually wanting RSTP redundancy?

Another lesser well known possiblity is the JMG 24F4 and it costs less than the Cisco.

Edit: Or maybe an F5 Big-IP?


----------



## TheRedRaptor (Nov 25, 2007)

Preyfar said:
			
		

> [ Data security = good.




Give the Hyena a cigar!


----------



## DragonTrew (Nov 26, 2007)

Preyfar said:
			
		

> A third server is in the planning stages which will mirror Bahamut as a fail-safe, redundant server. Data security = good.
> 
> Before we can upgrade to that, we're going to need to invest in a switch to handle the multiple server arrays.



New servers require a network update, I would recommend either Cisco or 3Com products, they used to work amazingly fine!


----------



## leeter (Nov 26, 2007)

and here we enter into the area where I have no experience, as I have about no serious network admin experience, but thats because I'm a dev and not IT.


----------



## nrr (Nov 27, 2007)

You know, you guys can argue technical details until you're all collectively blue in the face, but I seriously doubt FA will ever have a sensible infrastructure or listen to anyone who has _die finale LÃ¶sung der Netzwerk-Probleme und Server-Probleme_.

How do I know this?  I'm experienced in the art of wasting my time slinging words around.


----------



## Ceceil Felias (Nov 28, 2007)

Ooh, this all is very intriguing.  I actually secured an old server box from my dad, a Dell Poweredge 300, and some salvaged parts from multiple others of the same type, and I've been thinking about setting up a little server for various odds and ends -- linked IRC server, space for a MU* as requested, Hamachi-style VPN with a private IRC server and imageboard... Stuff like that, y'know.

At the moment, it's got a few SCSI drives (4/4/20GB) and an IDE drive (20GB) in it, but my stepdad has some unused 36GB Seagate Cheetah fibre-channel drives that he might be willing to let me have a few of, including a card to work with them. I was thinking of setting up a software RAID 5 array with a supplementary IDE drive for the purposes of booting up, starting the array, cross-comparing OS integrity, then transferring all the links and dependencies over to the RAID before shutting off the IDE... etc. etc. yeah. .-. But I ramble, and I'm probably steering this thread off by talking about my potential server ideas like that.

But it's very intriguing to hear that FA apparently has a similar system to my idea set up for its main HTTP server, though with a RAM drive instead.


----------



## karoug (Nov 29, 2007)

Maybe they can get one of those solid state drives with a 2.5" HDD backup drive.


----------



## Rimpala (Nov 29, 2007)

*tries to read all the tech stuff*

duh... at what point are hamster wheels involved?


----------

