Rob Beckers
13th April 2014, 17:15
After many, many years on our trusty Windows-2000 Athlon server (yes, they are still around!), I have just moved the Green Power Talk forum over to its new home: A brand-spanking-new Xeon server running Linux.
Since moving databases and PHP code between platforms is never easy, please keep an eye out for strange behavior and let me know if something is not working as it should. Hopefully all you will notice is a much more responsive server!
For the Geeks that are interested:
The new server has been put together by Yours Truly personally (you probably didn't know that I have a few decades of IT and programming background, starting before the "IBM PC" days). It's a Supermicro MBD-X9SCL-F-O server motherboard with an Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 processor; a little gem of a 4-core CPU that packs a processing wallop at a very reasonable price point. Currently without a doubt the best bang-for-the-server-buck unless you really need top-shelf performance and are willing to pay for that. There's 32Mb of ECC RAM, and a Samsung SSD provides the storage. All placed in a 2U case for rack mounting. As servers go this is a modest one, at a modest price point, though it runs circles around the old hardware. Components were selected for the needed performance, reliability, and price point.
The server runs head-less. There's no keyboard/mouse/monitor attached. It is all maintained remotely via Supermicro's IPMI View software (and that works beautifully!).
Here is the new server in-the-flesh:
1102
On the software side we're running CentOS v6.5 on the hardware, while the server itself runs as a virtual machine under KVM-QEMU, also running CentOS v6.5. This setup allows me to run multiple virtual machines (some of which can be Linux, some can even be Windows or another operating system, though no immediate plans for anything other than Linux servers for our various business needs). The server consists of Apache as the Web server, MySQL for the database engine, and OpenPHP for the underlying code.
Virtual machines allow better security; one virtual machine doesn't 'see' the other virtual machines, nor the underlying hardware, and it makes migration to other hardware (if needed) much easier. Backups are as simple as taking a snapshot. The forum virtual machine was tuned for maximum performance, as close to the metal as KVM allows.
Software was installed with security in mind (and yes, we have SELinux enabled, so hacking the Web server won't get you very far). This box should be nailed shut pretty well, though of course I appreciate any helpful suggestions or reports of issues.
Let's hope the new machine works as well and reliably as the old one did for the past 8 years!
-RoB-
Since moving databases and PHP code between platforms is never easy, please keep an eye out for strange behavior and let me know if something is not working as it should. Hopefully all you will notice is a much more responsive server!
For the Geeks that are interested:
The new server has been put together by Yours Truly personally (you probably didn't know that I have a few decades of IT and programming background, starting before the "IBM PC" days). It's a Supermicro MBD-X9SCL-F-O server motherboard with an Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 processor; a little gem of a 4-core CPU that packs a processing wallop at a very reasonable price point. Currently without a doubt the best bang-for-the-server-buck unless you really need top-shelf performance and are willing to pay for that. There's 32Mb of ECC RAM, and a Samsung SSD provides the storage. All placed in a 2U case for rack mounting. As servers go this is a modest one, at a modest price point, though it runs circles around the old hardware. Components were selected for the needed performance, reliability, and price point.
The server runs head-less. There's no keyboard/mouse/monitor attached. It is all maintained remotely via Supermicro's IPMI View software (and that works beautifully!).
Here is the new server in-the-flesh:
1102
On the software side we're running CentOS v6.5 on the hardware, while the server itself runs as a virtual machine under KVM-QEMU, also running CentOS v6.5. This setup allows me to run multiple virtual machines (some of which can be Linux, some can even be Windows or another operating system, though no immediate plans for anything other than Linux servers for our various business needs). The server consists of Apache as the Web server, MySQL for the database engine, and OpenPHP for the underlying code.
Virtual machines allow better security; one virtual machine doesn't 'see' the other virtual machines, nor the underlying hardware, and it makes migration to other hardware (if needed) much easier. Backups are as simple as taking a snapshot. The forum virtual machine was tuned for maximum performance, as close to the metal as KVM allows.
Software was installed with security in mind (and yes, we have SELinux enabled, so hacking the Web server won't get you very far). This box should be nailed shut pretty well, though of course I appreciate any helpful suggestions or reports of issues.
Let's hope the new machine works as well and reliably as the old one did for the past 8 years!
-RoB-