YWAM Information Technology - setting up a server - Comments

sounds exactly like that

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:50:17 +0000

Hi Kev,
your right. Our terrible loud vacuum cleaner is nice compared to that.

Luckily the fans are spinning down after a short while. Otherwise I guess the guys from across the street would watch out ufos. haha
But seriously I thought about getting out my ear plugs as long as I have to sit next to the server. But with the fans spinning down it's OK.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

Sounds like...

KevinColyer — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:40:07 +0000

...it will go VRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Have fun!

Cheers,

Kevin

server setup

neo — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:06:53 +0000

Hi @ all,
& thanks for your comment, mate.

I couldn't be here for a while, so sorry for my late reply.
We now have all the hardware, everything sits in the rack and is ready to be installed. First thing I needed to do is figuring out how to set up the RAID. Never done that before but it should be working now.
So, quickly after I turned on the system for the first time I was surrounded by half the folks from our office. Not because they all wanted to see how it looks like with all the flashing lights but because they couldn't figure out what the noise was. Well, a server with redundant power supply, redundant cooling fans and a disk enclosure with redundant cooling as well make quit some noise & wind when turning on and every blows at full speed. It's like a jet engine, I guess.

Anyways, I wanted to install the system but couldn't read the install CD on that machine. After a while I found out the problem. I downloaded the Debian Image for IA64 (Intel Architecture 64bit), exactly that what we have. But then I figured out that this is only for Itanium processors but we have a Xeon 64bit. So, I need to download the AMD64 install Image. I just thought I don't have an AMD so I need the other one. I guess I should have done my homework better.
So, tomorrow morning I will download the correct one and then I'll see how it goes.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

server setup opinion

crashsystems — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:02:02 +0100

I think that the answers to most of your questions boil down to two main things: how the server will be used and personal opinion. Since I do not know much of the former, I'll give you my opinion. Debian is a good choice for an OS no matter what use the server will be put to.

As far as swap amount, there a lot of disagreements in that area. I've heard a number of people say it should be double your ram, but with 4gb, I think that would be overkill. The main server I'm administrating (also running Debian) is performing NAT with three ethernet cards, running Samba/LAMP/SSH, has 1gb of ram, and only uses 32mb of swap. Even (or espessialy) Linux kernel developers cannot agree on this.

For your file system, the most common choice is ext3, as it is a good all-around file system. However, its not the fastest one out there. My personal favorite is XFS, which is good for both general desktop usage as well as file server usage. It has amazing performance and is very efficiant. Two caveats about XFS though: first, if you use grub as your bootloader you must make a small non-XFS /boot partition, and second, you really should run a power backup if you use it (which you should do in any case). Another option is JFS, which I've heard is good for mail servers and anything else that involves read/write to many small files. Yet another option I've researched recently is LVM, though keep in mind that if you go this route, XFS volumes do not shrink.

Two backup programs I've used quite a bit are rsync, and more recently rdiff-backup. Both are easy to automate with cron + bash, and work with Mac too.

Here are some articles I've read that you can check out to read more. Have fun playing with your fancy new hardware!

File system comparisons: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
LVM: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388
Rsync: http://www.linux.com/feature/113847
Rdiff-backup: http://arstechnica.com/articles/columns/linux/linux-20060202.ars/2

setting up a server

neo — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:49:54 +0100

Hi folks.
We are very privileged and happy that our new hardware will arrive soon. Mainly it's for backup but we all know that the possibilities are almost endless. Non the less, the first goal is to get the backup going. But since I'm not doing that everyday (setting up servers) I thought I ask and see if you have some helpful hints for me.

First of all the hardware. We will get a server (PowerEdge 1950) and a DAS (PowerVault MD1000) attached to it. Both is from Dell. The server will have 2x750GB drives which will be mirrored and 4GB RAM. The DAS has 6x750GB drives which I also want to be mirrored (RAID1).

But where do I go from here? OS will be Debian Linux (non debatable). But I still have not decided what file system to use and how big the swap partition will be. Any suggestions?
How do I set up the backup? Which program, pull from the server or push from the individual machines (99% Macs) with a script?
Just to shell out some possible options for the future. Email server with remote login (VPN, SSL), Intranet with some sort of groupware for individual and group calendar, project planner, knowledge base, etc. Disk Quota would probably a good idea (which file system does support quotas?) and the requirement of strong passwords (how do I force strong passwords?).
It's not meant to be an application server, no LTSP, it will not have X installed. Everything will be controlled remotely via console.

Those are a some things I need to think about. Any suggestions, comments, ideas, etc are welcome.

Greetings from the MatriX,
neo

Edit: Sorry about these strange looking line breaks. I didn't put them in and I don't have them in the editing window. :(