More Power To Us Part 1: Wolverine
June 24th, 2006 at 3:57 pm by zack
In the recent weeks, we’ve been dealing with an increased amount of user traffic on our guide data servers. This has meant slower guide data download times during peak hours for some users. The servers providing the data up to this point were in no way underpowered (dual processor Xeon, 4gb ram, 10k rpm SCSI drives, ect), but just weren’t up to the task.
So we went shopping!
The requirements were simple: Pack enough horsepower into a 1u (that’s geek speak for really small) chassis to fix the problem and provide scalability for the future….. without breaking the bank.
We looked into HP, Gateway, Dell and Custom Built solutions, comparing the price and feature sets available at each level. In the end, the brand new Dell 1950 chassis was exactly what we were looking for.
Given Dell’s crazy pricing schemes and freebies, we were able to secure a Xeon, Dual Core, Dual Processor, HyperThreaded, 3.0ghz box with dual 146gb 10k rpm drives across a Perc 5/i controller without going over budget. If you know servers, then you get the picture. If you don’t know servers, then suffice it to say that this box is Honkin!
Gratuitous Server Shots:
We put Wolverine into service this morning without too much trouble. Knock on wood…. when you get guide data tonight, it should be from the new box.
What’s next?
Well, on top of a processor shortage for the guide data, we also need a little bit of extra drive space to house a few things.
Juggernaut will be born next week. Evil Laugh.
Keep in mind, the drives shown in the picture will only fill 1/4 of the hot swap bays of the new machine. Another Evil Laugh.
Here’s a teaser of some of it’s parts (yes, those are 500gb drives):
June 24th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Yeah, but Maxtor drives?
June 26th, 2006 at 9:44 am
As crazy as this sounds, I actually enjoyed this entry. Puts some substance behind that crazy “Guide Updating” thing.
Good luck with the new gear.
June 26th, 2006 at 9:47 am
So I wasn’t the only one who cringed at the maxtor drives…
June 26th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
lol, yah, the maxtor drives were a topic of much debate on the drive over to Fry’s Electronics to buy those four you see there. We pray they don’t all spontaneously explode one day, but they had a price we just couldn’t pass up. All hopes up for Juggernaut AKA “I’m the Juggernaut Bitch!” ( http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3934651591022114445 )
June 26th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
You know I enjoyed it as well [yea yea besides the whole craxtor drives part]. I love behind the scenes anything. I thought I noticed some pickup on the last updates. Enjoy the new hardware.
June 27th, 2006 at 6:47 am
I dunno… do you really think that your 1950 is faster than a dual-dual HP DL145 G2?
I’d be happy to benchmark against it.
-MattL
June 29th, 2006 at 3:52 pm
You should have used the new Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB hard drive. It uses the new perpendicular recording that allows greater areal density and is about as fast as 10K rpm Raptor drive. I sell them all day long at $419.99.
Faster, bigger and “not” Maxtor. This is my next drive to handle the 8.25GB 1 hour HD files I record over the air with my ATI HDTV card.
PS - I cand now Snipstream them as much as 50% which allows me to wait before I have to buy another drive.
July 2nd, 2006 at 2:59 am
Meh. Where’s the fc san?
July 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
oh god not the maxtors, I wouldn’t put that picture up if I were you. I don’t envy you for having those maxtors, its more of pity. I spend years replacing every maxtor I own (bought them way back then before I knew better) with Seagates, and you went and bought new maxtors. tisk tisk…
The only data I would but on a maxtor is maybe my browser cache…. maybe. Have fun when they start clicking.
July 17th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
What case are you putting 16 drives in? I am looking for something like that for work.
Dennis
July 17th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
It’s actually a 15 drive machine…
http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/3U/933/SC933T-R760.cfm
I really like it. I’ll have the new article on it posted soon…. building that machine was nice. That case is really great, well engineered.
We’re using it with one (for now) 8 port sata Promise FastTrak SX8300 controller.
July 20th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
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March 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am
Article about poor Dell 1950/2950 performance:
http://www.zulustips.com/2007/03/03/dell-sas-5i-poor-performance.html