Server Financial Drive - 2011 : Specifications and Requirements

[Visavant]

There were some grumblings regarding the rental process of servers, particularly those of which are mismanaged by their parent companies. When renting a server, one spends an inordinate amount of money over a period of time for the use of the server which assuming all goes well, you will have paid quite a sum of cash beyond the expected value of the hardware at the end of typical 12 month terms. This cost fluctuates over the life of the machine but many companies gouge the customer with relatively antiquated machinery.

Naturally, this is not acceptable.

The proposal here is to run a financial drive toward the purchase of a machine with intention of longevity, performance, and potential resell value for a replacement in five years for accommodation of community growth. With the purchase of such a machine, the costs of colocation (power, bandwidth, facility storing) is significantly reduced in terms of month to month operations, overall the deployment and management being a significantly cheaper ordeal. Listed below is the current hardware specifications being examined with consideration to the requirements of Sundren and the single thread only application NWServer.

The Server
CPU: $340 Intel Core i7-2600K | 4 Core - 3.4 GHz Clock - OCable to 4.8GHz stable
Mainboard: $180 MSI P67A-GD55
Memory: $249 G.Skil Ripjaw 16GB DDR3 1600
Power Supply: $130 Corsair 750-TX
Video: $40 eVGA 8400 GS
Storage: $240 OCZ Vertex 2 SSD 120GB
Storage2: $80 Hitachi DeskStar 7200 RPM HDD SATA-II
Thermal: $10 Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound
CPU Cooling: $110 Corsair H70 Closed Loop Water Cooling
Case: Undetermined, roughly $140
Drive Controller: Undetermined, roughly $100

Total Cost
Roughly: $1,619

This cost does not include shipping, tax, or rack mounting hardware. An attempt will be made to get the parts at the cheapest cost, and all residual money will assist in the monthly colocated costs. The ancillary drive is intended for SVN, backups, ISOs. Drive controller requirement is based on interface specification and Intel recall of the P67 chipset lineup. This configuration will allow Sundren to continue forward for years to come on current cutting edge architecture. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, certainly post them via this thread.

[TakenByTheStormX]

The problem with watercooling is the amount of maintenance it requires.. I doubt whoever has access to actually cleaning the machine will want to screw with it while they also fix things on the server itself. I've had watercooling, and it works really well, but eventually your radiator gets clogged with dust and the fluid gets older and less efficient. After five years, that watercooling is going to be so nasty, you can say bye-bye to resale value.

[Saulus]

Last time I checked the H70 and other Corsair Liquid coolers are closed loop systems and do not need refilling. They are essentially idiot proof liquid cooling with performance somewhere between air and a custom loop.

It sounds to me Taken that you probably bought some PoS watercooling kit. The H70 is a little different as it is a closed loop.

[TakenByTheStormX]

Wait.. So there's no radiator?.. It just keeps running warm liquid through the heatsink? I'm confused then. ~_~

Edit: Uh.. Googled it. The liquid still probably gets old, and that radiator is still going to trap dust. <.<

[Visavant]

Well, I could take a needle to the line, drain the water and replace it with an alcohol but I don't think colocation facilities will take kindly to that. Also, colocation facilities (high quality ones like the one I'm at at least) have air filtration processes. Dust is a moot point. The worst case scenario of that H70 in terms of it's liquid is a hose popping or the motor burning up. Neither is likely.

[TakenByTheStormX]

In that case it shouldn't really be a problem. Watercool away.

[GRCrush]

Looks to me like you are building a home gamer system minus a solid vid card and not a server.

points to note

- NWN2 benefits little from a quad core processor
- Considering todays air cooled systems a water cooling unit is a waste of money
- You have not accounted for any redundancy in either the primary drive or the data
storage drive (No RAID)
- No cost for operating system or SQL. These alone will add considerable cost to your
server
- No backup systems allocated in your cost (Remote backup drive storage or UPS
system)
- Bandwith. Does the supporting location have sufficent bandwith at an affordable cost?

Several other issues and questions come to mind These are but a few that popped out.

[Atmosphere]

Sundren has always had one of the top five, if not nearly always number one, connection rates out of all the role play servers out there in NWN2 world. Word to your mother, you got servereded.

[Visavant]

Looks to me like you are building a home gamer system minus a solid vid card and not a server.

Indeed. The machine Sundren currently runs on is a PE1950, housing server class Xeon processors of the Core Duo era. The i7 920 desktop sitting under my desk out performs it at the stock clock with the nwserver process largely due to the nehalem memory handling. When I purchased a $7,500 Dell R610 machine to run Baldur's Gate in 2009, running 2.9GHz Xeon 55XX line processors, the process benefited only from the clock freq in difference from when it was running on an i7 920 machine earlier. When the application can actually benefit from server class hardware, then an investment in server class hardware might actually present itself as being worthwhile.

- NWN2 benefits little from a quad core processor

That is why I mentioned that nwserver is a single threaded process. The reason for the SDB architecture, high stock clock and OC is to provide a significant boost to what is already capable. The multiple cores is essential as NWServer will be assigned to it's own core to use, while other services such as SQL, the OS, httpd, SVN, ftp, RDP, will all float from the other three.

Considering todays air cooled systems a water cooling unit is a waste of money

The H70 is only a few dollars more (literally) more than the aftermarket air coolers. The profile and attachment of the H70 is also a lesser weight than those aluminum bricks hanging off the mainboard provides you suggest. Aftermarket air coolers can only provide efficiency up to a certain point, the H70 covers the range that extends.

You have not accounted for any redundancy in either the primary drive or the data
storage drive (No RAID)

RAID is not a backup solution. The effort I will be making is going into the DC every month to hook a drive up to the machine for pulling the backup from the ancillary drive for Saulus to sync remotely from a separate location entirely.

No cost for operating system or SQL. These alone will add considerable cost to your server

SQL server is MySQL. Free. The OS licence is not calculated as it is not applicable in this immediate situation. (180 days, at worst case scenario)

- No backup systems allocated in your cost (Remote backup drive storage or UPS
system)

Purchasing a second UPS to sit under the liebert UPS provided by a datacenter isn't necessary.

- Bandwith. Does the supporting location have sufficent bandwith at an affordable cost?

Not applicable in this figure as this is machine specification. Colocated bandwidth costs have already been calculated. ($10/mo per every 100GB transfer).

Sundren has always had one of the top five, if not nearly always number one, connection rates out of all the role play servers out there in NWN2 world. Word to your mother, you got servereded.

My business peers with seven international and 19 domestic nodes. Baldur's Gate had the #1 spot in 2009 when I hosted them.

[GRCrush]

Quote:
You have not accounted for any redundancy in either the primary drive or the data
storage drive (No RAID)

RAID is not a backup solution. The effort I will be making is going into the DC every month to hook a drive up to the machine for pulling the backup from the ancillary drive for Saulus to sync remotely from a separate location entirely.

I was not suggesting RAID as a backup solution. Rather it is a solution to insure system up times that can be at risk due to hardware failure.

As for the other questions. Well answered.

Though calculating power a 650watt corsair TX is sufficient and 50 bucks less then the 750 (call me budget concious :P )

I am also curious where you are getting your OCZ vert drives at for 240 on a 120 gig ( from one OCZ customer to another) I get my 100 gigs at 280 is why I ask.

[Visavant]

I was not suggesting RAID as a backup solution. Rather it is a solution to insure system up times that can be at risk due to hardware failure.

I certainly can then agree with you on that front, though that's dependent on how much the community wants to shell out extra for that second SSD. Virtualizing the environment and making snapshots of it's running state out to the HDD periodically means that a single SSD purchase and swap is only a 24 hour issue than to shell out cash for an SSD twice and the second may never fail in the time it takes before an upgrade is made three years from now. It's really a matter of how insufferable downtime might be, especially as we can take a USB stick to act as the hypervisor temporarily and revive the server on the HDD backups within a half hour's notice while awaiting the permanent replacement.

As for the other questions. Well answered.

Thank you, and thank you for asking them. The buying list is always open to revision.

[Visavant]

I am also curious where you are getting your OCZ vert drives at for 240 on a 120 gig ( from one OCZ customer to another) I get my 100 gigs at 280 is why I ask.

Newegg Listing at $219 currently. My fear is that by the time the ball gets rolling again, the price will go up a few bucks, but it's a great steal right now.