[nmglug] Production server question
Andres Paglayan
andres at paglayan.com
Fri Mar 27 12:42:25 PDT 2009
excellent and very useful report Nick, much appreciated,
I'd say that budget is probably on the $3-4ks,
that fail-over is important,
(probably lesser hardware performing as backup and mirror DB would do)
the bottle neck would probably be on MySQL,
some complex dashboard pages need to run about 50+ queries before they
are served,
so focusing on HD i/o speed might be crucial,
I've been super happy with linux soft raid, I don't see why not using
it,
and every time i had to use some
> Well, among the options there's the OEM route and the custom route.
> Depending on budget, you could do something like an HP DL380G5 for
> about $5,000.00 to $6,000.00 on the high end, though depending on disk
> requirements the cost might change. A fully loaded HP MSA70 SAS array
> of 25 drives costs about $10,000.00 but it sounds like you wouldn't
> need that much disk, just the server.
>
> Dell has some servers in the $3,800+ range that might do the job, for
> example;
>
> PowerEdge Energy Smart 2950 III
> Dual Core Intel® Xeon® L5240, 6MB Cache, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB, ES
> Additional Processor
> Dual Core Intel® Xeon® L5240, 6MB Cache, 3.0GHz, 1333MHz FSB
> Memory 8GB 667MHz (4x2GB), Dual Ranked DIMMs, Energy Smart
>
> Sun Microsystems has some decent servers at about $4,000.00 to $5,000
> that support 4 drives (for RAID-5 or RAID-10)
>
> http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4200/
>
> As for the custom route, in my experience PC Power and Cooling makes
> some nice PSU's. I've had good luck with some lower-end server
> motherboards at Newegg, such as the Tyan S2925A2NRF;
>
> uptime
> 13:03:47 up 18 days, 14:12, 4 users, load average: 1.21, 1.22, 1.19
>
> but I think they no longer sell that board and for a system supporting
> 100 users, more CPU's/cores, more RAM, and faster disk (SAS or U320
> SCSI) might be nice. Hard to say without knowing the memory
> utilization of the web application in question under the type of load
> you are seeing (100 users). There are a number of server boards to
> choose from which are well-reviewed;
>
> SUPERMICRO MBD-X7DWA-N Dual LGA 771 Intel 5400 Extended ATX Server
> Motherboard - Retail
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182130
>
> But, building a system from parts and finding a case to fit an EATX
> board like that is less appealing to me nowadays. I'd rather just
> purchase a barebones system or a box that I can unpack, rack, install
> and be up and running. My patience for fooling with hardware in the
> work environment has lessened.
>
> Supermicro makes some nice affordable barebones server systems (and so
> does Tyan);
>
> SUPERMICRO SYS-6015B-TB 1U Barebone Server Intel 5000P Dual LGA 771
> Dual Intel Xeon 1333/1066MHz FSB
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16816101133
>
> SUPERMICRO SYS-6025W-NTR+B 2U Barebone Server Intel 5400 Dual LGA 771
> Dual Intel Xeon 1600/1333/1066MHz FSB
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16816101180
>
> I used a Tyan GT20 1U (barebones) server at my last job and it was
> absolutely bulletproof hardware, but the load was nothing like 100
> users on a web application.
>
> I've had good luck with software RAID, both with RAID-1 and RAID-5
> under Linux, but you could use a 3ware or Adaptec controller for
> hardware RAID with a Supermicro server.
>
> If the server is mission critical (production) and intended to support
> 100 users, I would think that the aim would be availability and to
> avoid downtime as that might be a significant problem for a multi-user
> system intended to serve/support 100 users. So, a clear argument could
> be made to purchase an OEM (Dell, HP, IBM, Sun ,etc.) server with same-
> day on-site hardware support, or have some spare parts on hand
> (purchase two less-expensive identical servers and use one as a
> development server/backup). At my day job we have six of the HP DL380
> G5 servers, each with an attached MSA 70 array. Recently two of the
> servers blew SAS drives (three SAS drive failures in total). Repair
> was as simple as using the HP Array Configuration CLI to confirm the
> drives were failed (as the drive LED's indicated), HP shipped
> replacement drives the next day and I just popped them in and the
> servers were running all the while (RAID-6 configuration). The
> hpacucli exists for Linux;
>
> http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&prodNameId=3288134&swEnvOID=4035&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-80a59132d68a442288a48e2634
>
> and under that type of hardware RAID (HP Smart Array Controller),
> dealing with disk failures ought to be as easy as pulling failed
> drives and inserting new ones (i.e. hardly any work/effort at all, and
> a good degree of redundancy, i.e. RAID-6). I will confess to liking
> the hardware in these HP systems quite a bit (despite the fact that
> they run Windows), but they are $5,000.00 to $6,000.00 servers and
> with the arrays each server is more like a $15,000.00 to $16,000.00
> system. I think one can do just as well (performance-wise) for a lot
> less money.
>
> I think for the server you describe, I would use a minimum of 8 GB of
> RAM and consumption will depend on a number of variables, such as if
> you use Apache 1.3.x or 2.x with loadable modules, and I have no idea
> what the resource requirements for the web application you mention
> would be. For the system you propose, I would vote for fast disk I/O
> such as SAS or U320 SCSI with 10K RPM or 15K RPM drives; probably SAS
> is your best bet. Disks will fail no matter what and as such I'd
> suggest hardware or software RAID, having spares on hand or quickly
> available (overnight shipping).
>
> We primarily use Sun servers at $day_job, and with a few exceptions,
> for the most part I like the Sun hardware. At another previous job
> they have a number of Supermicro servers, some of which have been
> running reliably for 4+ years (but having a hot spare server is a good
> idea if the system is a production system supporting a large number
> of users...i.e. 100 users).
>
> At the moment I'm testing an 8-way SunFire X2200 with 8 GB of RAM
> (running Rosetta at home) the testbed OS is Fedora Core 10 (x86_64) and
> the machine is doing fine (only two drives in RAID-1 though, and so
> not suitable I would think for your proposed 100 user system). We've
> have some trouble with this particular system, but in general the Sun
> servers have been great (some running Solaris, some running Linux) and
> perform well. Having a company with spare parts and Field Engineers
> behind the product is nice for production systems.
>
> top - 06:59:22 up 21:34, 3 users, load average: 8.18, 8.17, 8.17
> Tasks: 250 total, 10 running, 238 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
> Cpu0 : 0.0%us, 1.3%sy, 98.7%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu1 : 6.0%us, 1.0%sy, 93.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu2 : 0.0%us, 0.0%sy,100.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu3 : 0.0%us, 3.3%sy, 96.7%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu4 : 2.3%us, 1.0%sy, 96.7%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu5 : 0.0%us, 1.0%sy, 99.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu6 : 1.7%us, 0.3%sy, 98.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Cpu7 : 0.0%us, 0.3%sy, 99.7%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi,
> 0.0%si, 0.0%st
> Mem: 8197460k total, 3878332k used, 4319128k free, 176892k buffers
> Swap: 41945592k total, 0k used, 41945592k free, 1049976k cached
>
> -Nick
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Nicholas S. Frost
> 7 Avenida Vista Grande #325
> Santa Fe, NM 87508
> nickf at nickorama.com
> ----------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
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> nmglug at nmglug.org
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-------------------------------
Andres Paglayan
o:
(505) 629-4344
m:
(505) 690-2871
f:
(505) 629-1008
h:
(505) 986-1561
andres at paglayan.com
--------------------------------
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