Tony and all, Anandtech adds Xeon database server.
Before the new server, Anandtech was using a Sun dual Ultrasparc II server for their back-end database, along with a dual Xeon server for the front-end web server. The new server will be a dual Pentium III Xeon running at 500 MHz w/ 1 MB of L2 cache, and it will function as a second database server.
According to Anandtech, this server "should help get rid of the annoying errors we've been getting for a little while now and it should speed things up considerably." Whether those errors were due to problems with the Sun server itself is unknown. But it is remarkable to see that Anandtech, a web site that I myself frequent, is moving from Sun to Intel-based servers.
anandtech.com
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AnandTech needs a theme song, and it needs to be called Server Problems. Sam Mayes (AnandTech's Database Mastah) took care of a few problems we were having with our current dual server setup, luckily help is on the way. Next week I'll be setting up yet another server for AnandTech, this Dual Xeon box will be another database server to add to our collection so we'll have two database servers (feeding the articles to you all) on the back end with a Cold Fusion dual Xeon box on the front end (making everything look pretty).
For those of you that are curious about what kind of hardware we're running, our current database server is an upgraded Sun Enterprise 250 with Dual Ultra Sparc II 300 processors and 1GB of RAM. Our current CF front end is a Dual Pentium III Xeon 500 (1MB) with two IBM 9LZX SCSI HDDs (10,000 RPM, 4MB buffers, in my opinion much better than the Cheetahs...very reliable) in RAID 5 using an AMI MegaRAID controller with 16MB ECC EDO RAM for cache. The new server will be a Dual Pentium III Xeon 500 (1MB) with three IBM 9LZX SCSI HDDs and the same RAID controller. The reason for having three HDDs on the new DB server is simple, we'll have one drive handling the OS with the other two operating in RAID 5 for the database. Since Disk I/O is critical to database performance we'll make sure that the disk performance of our upcoming box is up to par with what we need to make AnandTech load quickly for you all. Both of those Xeon boxes are outfitted with 1GB of ECC SDRAM, and for those of you that are wondering, we're using the Tyan Thunder X motherboard to run those two Xeon servers.
Once we get this third server up it should help get rid of the annoying errors we've been getting for a little while now and it should speed things up considerably. I'll get to work on adding a fourth server to the group which will be a secondary CF server just in case something happens to that box. What we're basically trying to do is achieve a solution that provides for as little downtime as possible. In any case, I'd like to thank you all for your patience during our growing pains (they're wonderful aren't they?) and there is light at the end of the tunnel. A big thanks to TC Computers for providing us with the 9LZX drives and the AMI RAID controller for our current setup.
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Tenchusatsu |
