Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Steve St.Laurent
Staff Alumni
Hardware ordered, hosting site chosen, and todays server crash
UPDATE: New server install delayed until April 22.
As things usually work, Murphy's Law has struck us - not once, but twice. One of the two new servers is completed and ready to ship. The second server, however, has been delayed while the manufacturer waits for a backordered RAID SCSI controller. The servers are now scheduled to ship on Tuesday of next week.
Additionally, based on information we received after-the-fact, we have decided to locate our servers at an alternate facility. Contracts with the new facility are now in place, and they will have our cabinet ready for installation on April 17. We expect testing to begin on the new equipment on Wednesday or Thursday of next week with the goal of moving the entire site over to the new equipment next weekend.
Thank you for your continued patience while we make this move.
Cross your fingers that Murphy doesn't strike again!
Steve St. Laurent
Lead Moderator
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As many of you are probably aware there was a MAJOR server crash this morning. Our infamous cascade failure bit us again this morning and when the server was rebooted the entire file system on the server was corrupted. Technicians at VERIO (our current host) along with our webmaster worked all day on getting the file system repaired and got the site back up around 4:00 pm eastern time. For an explanation of the reason that crash happened look at this announcement ( https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/announcement.php?s=&forumid=26 ). Our hope was that turning the Avatars off and disabling the search would enable the current system to run until the new servers are in place. Unforetunately, although it did help it looks like we're going to still have some server busy messages along with crashes until they are in place.
Now for the good news, a co-location facility has been chosen to host the new servers. I spoke with a webmaster today that is running the same version of vBulletin as we are and he has up to 1500 simultaneous users on his system. We are configuring the new servers based on his system because we know it works, except that we are buying even more power (he has dual 1 Ghz CPU's we are buying dual 1. 9 Ghz CPU's, and he has 10,000 rpm drives we are buying 15,000 rpm drives). The TDR is also hiring him as a consultant to look the system over and help with configuring it to be absolutely sure it's set up correctly. Also, an order was placed for the new servers today. There will be two identical servers on the new system. One will be a database server with the other one serving up the web pages (as well as backing up the database). Here's the specs:
Rack mount case with extra fans
Dual AMD Athlon 1900+ MP processors
Tyan S2462 dual processor motherboard
2 GB ECC RAM (error correcting)
4 - 18. 2G 15,000 RPM Ultra 160 SCSI HD's (full RAID 5 array with 1 standby HD) - hot swappable
128MB Caching RAID 5 SCSI Controller
Dual hot swappable power supplies
Dual - 1 Gbit network cards
Redhat Linux 7. 2
Tape backup
This is a $10,000 investment in hardware - and it's not easy to spend that much on hardware. As said above the site that we are modeling this off of is supporting up to 1,500 simultaneous users (our current peak is around 250) and that's with dual 1 Ghz processors and 10,000 rpm drives. Our systems will be almost twice that speed and the drives will also be significantly faster. These systems should be in our hands by the end of the week and will be undergoing testing and configuration next week. They should be online and operating by the 15th of this month. Thanks again for your continued patience, we will do our best to keep the site up and running.
-Steve St. Laurent
Lead Moderator
UPDATE: New server install delayed until April 22.
As things usually work, Murphy's Law has struck us - not once, but twice. One of the two new servers is completed and ready to ship. The second server, however, has been delayed while the manufacturer waits for a backordered RAID SCSI controller. The servers are now scheduled to ship on Tuesday of next week.
Additionally, based on information we received after-the-fact, we have decided to locate our servers at an alternate facility. Contracts with the new facility are now in place, and they will have our cabinet ready for installation on April 17. We expect testing to begin on the new equipment on Wednesday or Thursday of next week with the goal of moving the entire site over to the new equipment next weekend.
Thank you for your continued patience while we make this move.
Cross your fingers that Murphy doesn't strike again!
Steve St. Laurent
Lead Moderator
----------------------------------------------------------------
As many of you are probably aware there was a MAJOR server crash this morning. Our infamous cascade failure bit us again this morning and when the server was rebooted the entire file system on the server was corrupted. Technicians at VERIO (our current host) along with our webmaster worked all day on getting the file system repaired and got the site back up around 4:00 pm eastern time. For an explanation of the reason that crash happened look at this announcement ( https://www.turbodieselregister.com/forums/announcement.php?s=&forumid=26 ). Our hope was that turning the Avatars off and disabling the search would enable the current system to run until the new servers are in place. Unforetunately, although it did help it looks like we're going to still have some server busy messages along with crashes until they are in place.
Now for the good news, a co-location facility has been chosen to host the new servers. I spoke with a webmaster today that is running the same version of vBulletin as we are and he has up to 1500 simultaneous users on his system. We are configuring the new servers based on his system because we know it works, except that we are buying even more power (he has dual 1 Ghz CPU's we are buying dual 1. 9 Ghz CPU's, and he has 10,000 rpm drives we are buying 15,000 rpm drives). The TDR is also hiring him as a consultant to look the system over and help with configuring it to be absolutely sure it's set up correctly. Also, an order was placed for the new servers today. There will be two identical servers on the new system. One will be a database server with the other one serving up the web pages (as well as backing up the database). Here's the specs:
Rack mount case with extra fans
Dual AMD Athlon 1900+ MP processors
Tyan S2462 dual processor motherboard
2 GB ECC RAM (error correcting)
4 - 18. 2G 15,000 RPM Ultra 160 SCSI HD's (full RAID 5 array with 1 standby HD) - hot swappable
128MB Caching RAID 5 SCSI Controller
Dual hot swappable power supplies
Dual - 1 Gbit network cards
Redhat Linux 7. 2
Tape backup
This is a $10,000 investment in hardware - and it's not easy to spend that much on hardware. As said above the site that we are modeling this off of is supporting up to 1,500 simultaneous users (our current peak is around 250) and that's with dual 1 Ghz processors and 10,000 rpm drives. Our systems will be almost twice that speed and the drives will also be significantly faster. These systems should be in our hands by the end of the week and will be undergoing testing and configuration next week. They should be online and operating by the 15th of this month. Thanks again for your continued patience, we will do our best to keep the site up and running.
-Steve St. Laurent
Lead Moderator
