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I am requesting FoE funds to help replace our 6 1/2 year old NFS servers. As you may know, eclipse.org suffered an outage yesterday and, to keep the story short, we are currently running all of eclipse.org on a single NFS server, on a degraded raid with one failed power supply. Not pretty. While we could invest some money in fixing these aging servers, parts availability may be scarce, expensive and leave us in a vulnerable state for extended periods. The end result would be repaired 6 1/2 year-old servers. I have spec'ed out new NFS servers: - 2U server chassis, redundant power - 2 Xeon E5645 six-core CPUs @ 2.4GHz - 48G 1333MHz RAM (ECC) - LSI 9261-8i SAS RAID controller with battery backup - 8 Seagate Cheetah 450G 10K rpm SAS drives Total: $8452 per server, two required = ~ $20K USD A pair of these servers would completely replace the two existing servers and their external RAID array, and would negate the need for a dedicated management console. The benefits over the existing servers: -> Two extra CPU cores per server (four total per pair) -> Faster CPUs -> 32G of additional memory per server (current servers have 16G each) -> 1.7 TB of additional disk space -> reclaim 12U of rack space -> reduced complexity The drawbacks: -> Seven fewer disk spindles per server means potentially slower access to disk; however, faster RAID controllers, faster RAM and triple the amount of RAM should lead to reduced disk access -> The servers quoted here are not big-brand servers, and therefore likely not as robust. We have been running similar servers for 4+ years and have never experienced any problems, but I would feel more comfortable running a big-brand name server. The cost and complexity of such systems, however, remains an issue and offers no guarantee that it will not fail. While we could begin the process of asking for corporate donations, time is of the essence -- should the other power supply fail, or should the remaining NFS server fail or crash, eclipse.org would be completely offline with no immediate recovery hardware suitable to sustain operations.
This seems reasonable and benefits everyone, +1 from me. What do the other committer reps think? Wayne? One thing to note is when we originally decided to give out funds, we setup some allocations here... http://wiki.eclipse.org/Friends_of_Eclipse/Funds_Allocation#Dates_and_Amounts This amount goes over our allocation amount.
(In reply to comment #1) > This seems reasonable and benefits everyone, +1 from me. > > What do the other committer reps think? Wayne? Strictly speaking, I don't get a vote. But if I could vote, I'd go +1. > One thing to note is when we originally decided to give out funds, we setup > some allocations here... > http://wiki.eclipse.org/Friends_of_Eclipse/Funds_Allocation#Dates_and_Amounts > > This amount goes over our allocation amount. We'll sort this out with some help from Chris-the-accountant.
Another thing to think about is potentially hosting more things outside of eclipse.org, I believe our bylaws have certain rules against this but maybe the bylaws should be modified to allow us to take advantage of third party hosting services which have matured a lot over the years.
(In reply to comment #3) > Another thing to think about is potentially hosting more things outside of > eclipse.org, I believe our bylaws have certain rules against this but maybe the > bylaws should be modified to allow us to take advantage of third party hosting > services which have matured a lot over the years. Chris - Good point. I suggest you consider raising this for discussion at our next board meeting.
(In reply to comment #1) > This seems reasonable and benefits everyone, +1 from me. > > What do the other committer reps think? Wayne? +1 from me, in particular in light of the following: (In reply to comment #0) > While we could begin the process of asking for corporate donations, time is of > the essence -- should the other power supply fail, or should the remaining NFS > server fail or crash, eclipse.org would be completely offline with no immediate > recovery hardware suitable to sustain operations. I don't want to even go there - completely offline? We need to ship Indigo!
Ed, thoughts?
I thought I gave this a +1 already yesterday, but I guess I was distracted and didn't hit "Save Changes".
Denis, that sounds like consensus. Please go ahead with the purchase.
(In reply to comment #8) > Denis, that sounds like consensus. Please go ahead with the purchase. I've submitted a quote for approval.
How much was the quote for? I'm going to close this as resolved since it's approved now. Please keep us updated as they come in.
(In reply to comment #10) > How much was the quote for? $16798.00 Actually, I switched to 15K rpm drives... they're actually $10 cheaper per unit :/
(In reply to comment #11) > (In reply to comment #10) > > How much was the quote for? > > $16798.00 Thanks, I updated the wiki. http://wiki.eclipse.org/Friends_of_Eclipse/Funds_Allocation#Approved_Disbursements
(In reply to comment #0) > I have spec'ed out new NFS servers: [snip] > - 8 Seagate Cheetah 450G 10K rpm SAS drives > The drawbacks: > -> Seven fewer disk spindles per server means potentially slower access to > disk In case anyone cares, I'll be ordering 15K rpm drives instead of the 10K since they're actually cheaper... One of our current arrays employs 10K drives, so these faster drives should help offset the lower spindle count. FWIW -- Matt and I have some tricks up our sleeves that will make this upgrade totally rock for committers.
> Another thing to think about is potentially hosting more things outside of > eclipse.org I'd be curious to know which things you have in mind?
(In reply to comment #14) > > Another thing to think about is potentially hosting more things outside of > > eclipse.org > > I'd be curious to know which things you have in mind? Forums is one thing that comes to mind immediately.
(In reply to comment #15) > (In reply to comment #14) > > > Another thing to think about is potentially hosting more things outside of > > > eclipse.org > > > > I'd be curious to know which things you have in mind? > > Forums is one thing that comes to mind immediately. I recommend opening a separate bug for this discussion.
Servers are ordered; should be here within the next couple of weeks.
