[svlug] progress report on our new server

[SVLUG President]

Hello, SVLUG!

I'm VERY excited about what Rick Moen and I just spent most of the weekend on.

On Saturday morning, we picked up a bunch of rackmount equipment --
what were once high-end VA Linux Systems server boxes -- from former
SVLUG President Marc Merlin's home in Sunnyvale, along with a long
list of well-considered spare parts.

This included:

o  A fully working VA Linux Systems model 2230 with 512MB ECC PC100 RAM,
  and dual 700 MHz PIII CPUs.  This was VA's classic 2U rackmount server.
  This is the box we're building to be a replacement for our main server.
  All 512 MB of its RAM passed a 12 hours overnight memtest86+ test
  while sitting on a picnic table in Rick's back yard on Saturday night, and we
  ALMOST got to having a working server except for some SCSI problems, which
  we're still in the process of working out.

o  A fully functional VA Linux Systems model 9008 JBOD box (also 2U form
  factor).  It has eight front-mount hotswap bays for SCA SCSI drives;
  Marc provided drive sleds and hardware for all bays, plus spares.
  This unit will house either 2 4x36GB Raid arrays or 1 8x36GB Raid array; we
  haven't yet decided.  That array will be hooked to the above server.

o  Mark gave us around 1/2 terabyte of SCA SCSI hard drives, mostly 36GB-ers.
   This is enough to fully populate the JBOD case with drives to
spare.  We'll be
   able to use the space for an ISO mirror (think bittorrent), backups
of the server's
   internal drives, and much more.

o  A second VA Linux Systems model 2230 with one CPU and 392 MB PC100
  RAM.  This RAM has passed a 3 hour memtest86+ test, plugged into the other
  server above.  The CPU or motherboard in this second server may or may not
  have a problem... we'll investigate and validate after we're done
with the first one.
  This box will either be a third server (think project playground) or
kept for spare
  parts since it's so similar to the first server.

o  A 4U server enclosure with five SCSI drives.  The motherboard in
this monster doesn't post... it has two HUGE Xeon processors... not
sure what we'll do with it.  It used to have a Jaz drive in it, then
Karsten fixed that for us.  A picture of the result will undoubtedly
be posted as a reply to this message sometime soon.  All I can say is,
we had to do SOMETHING for entertainment that evening...

o  A small 1U network switch - this is cool since our current switch
is 4U high, so we can pull it out and gain 3U of rack space at the
colo.  Woo hoo!

o  Various and sundry other hardware, including a few old beige boxes
(one still available for whoever wants it; worst case, I'll try'n
install something on it at the next installfest) and a bunch of random
cards I've yet to dig through in detail.

o  A bunch of external drive enclosures.  If you'd like one or two,
just ask.  We won't be using them at the colo, and neither Rick nor I
have personal need of them.

So... WOW... that's a hell of an inventory - it barely fit into Rick's
back seat & trunk.

On Saturday afternoon and Sunday, Rick and I concentrated on
validating RAM, sledding and formatting hard drives, documenting
what's what, and getting the main 2U server and JBOD enclosure ready
to deploy.

We got the server fully loaded with Debian 4.0 "etch", but suffered last minute
SCSI problems with the boot hard drive.  Rick bought a new cable today, that
he'll be dropping by my place later tonight.  Boy, he works late hours.

Here's the upshot - We're really close to having a phenomenally good
machine online as our new server.  I'm hoping to install it at the
colo sometime this week.

Best regards,
-Paul Reiber
President, SVLUG
http://svlug.org/~pbr