Otaking 2.0

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Revision as of 10:47, 17 August 2007

1 Plans for otaking 2.0

Plans for otaking 2.0

Hardware

Hardware plans have changed after Intel's price drop this summer. It will be alot of new things.

Pre-existing hardware

A few old HDDs for temporary high-performance non-critical storage (possibly 3x 80 GB in software RAID 5).

IDE controller card using a PCI slot. (Will require a new one if there is no Linux support.)

Planned purchases

Case

Chieftec Mesh Fulltower with a 400W PSU included.

I will require two 120mm fans and three to five 92mm fans as well as a fan controller with at least 4 channels to go with them. Maybe some filters as well.

Motherboard

I had my eyes on the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6 with four GbLAN ports, 10 SATAII ports etc, but it costs a shitload. I probably won't need more than what the Abit AB9 Pro has to offer, which is two GbLAN ports and 9 SATAII ports (plus one eSATA). I still need to confirm driver compatibility with Red Hat based OSes on the AB9 Pro.

CPU

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2.4 GHz with four cores and 4 MB L2 cache per pair.

RAM

2-4 GB of DDR2 RAM of any decent brand will do. Preferably two 2 GB sticks to have room for upgrades in the future, if more than 4 GB is needed.

Graphics card

A low-end graphics card for PCI-express. Mostly any will do as long as it doesn't try to share system memory.

Storage

2x 250 or 320 GB SATA HDDs (Western Digital RE/RE2, RE=Raid Edition with 5 year warranty); For use as system disks in a software RAID 1 array.

500 GB Western Digital (SE or RE) for additional storage. Possibly more since I need to replace three drives, two 200 GB and one 320 GB, that are close to failing.

Software

Host OS: CentOS 5 (based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux)

VMware Server for Linux

Concept

Minimal host OS running multiple guest OSes with VMware Server.

Virtual Machines

A short list of possible configurations of virtual machines. Each VM has some overhead in terms of RAM usage which limits the number of VMs I can run at one time. Possible overhead (up to 54 MB for a VM allocated up to 512 MB RAM) is not included in resource proposal. I think up to 1700-1800 MB RAM can be directly allocated, leaving 200-300 MB RAM for overhead and host OS.

	Description	Guest OS	Service(s)	Resource proposal	Main storage	Comment
VM 1	Firewall/ port forward	FreeBSD	ipfw with dummynets(?)	~64-192 MB RAM	Configuration saved within VMfs
VM 2	DB server	FreeBSD	MySQL 5.x	~192-256 MB RAM	DB saved within VMware virtual disk	Current database size ~100 MB
VM 3	NAS	FreeBSD	FreeNAS(?)	~128 MB RAM(?)	Files saved within VMware virtual disk and/or raw mounted disks(?)
VM 4	HTTP server	FreeBSD	Apache 2.x	~256 MB RAM	Files accessed via NAS(?)
VM 5	Mail server	FreeBSD	Courier-IMAP and Postfix with SpamAssassin	~128-256 MB RAM	Mailboxes accessed via NAS or local(?)
VM 6	FTP server	FreeBSD	PureFTPd(?)	~128-256 MB RAM	Files accessed via NAS(?)
Summary				~896-1344 MB RAM / 2048 MB

Additional services

Some form of user database connection with mail, FTP and NAS. Candidates: LDAP?

Separate database within HTTP server for its use only?

Possible mergers

Only use FTP from FreeNAS, skip standalone FTP server?

Intigrate user database/authentication into DB VM?

Mail server with firewall?

Storage

Different ways to manage VM/data storage. The easiest way to share access to data is to utilize the NAS server

One idea is to store the information in the same VMware virtual disk as the guest OS. This could work well enough when the required storage space is low.

A better idea is to store the data in a separate VMware virtual disk from the guest OS for easy backup. In the case of large storage requirements, like for the NAS server, this is a much better idea than the previous since it separates the OS from the data.

A third idea, mainly for the NAS server's more permanent storage of larger files, is to mount one or more partitions/devices raw. You wouldn't need to have data stored in VMware virtual disk files on such drives, which increases portability and access from outside of the VM if necessary.

VMware discussion forum

VMware Server forum

My recently posted topic: VM and data storage (comments on my planned server upgrade is appreciated)

Interesting topics

ram drive

Physical Disk Multiple VMservers

Multiple NICS in host machine

Shared Drive question..

VMDK Performance tweaks....how to obtain the best performance???

Vmware Server – Teaming / Bonding Multiple NICs in Linux

Links

Minimal Services on CentOS 4.4 mini howto

Retrieved from "http://wiki.otaking.se/wiki/Otaking_2.0"

 =Plans for otaking 2.0=
 ==Hardware==
-New hardware will utilize most of my old gaming rig.
+Hardware plans have changed after Intel's price drop this summer. It will be alot of new things.
 ===Pre-existing hardware===
-Case: Chieftec Dragon miditower with the insides covered with vibration and sound dampening sheets
+A few old HDDs for temporary high-performance non-critical storage (possibly 3x 80 GB in software RAID 5).
-Case fans: 5x Arctic Cooling 8cm fans running at 7 V (2 front, 2 rear, 1 psu)
+IDE controller card using a PCI slot. (Will require a new one if there is no Linux support.)
-CPU fan: Zalman 7000Cu
+===Planned purchases===
+'''Case'''
-Motherboard: MSI Neo-FIS2R K8T800
+[http://www.chieftec.com/oka.html Chieftec Mesh Fulltower] with a 400W PSU included.
-CPU: AMD Athlon64 3000+ (2.0 GHz)
+I will require two 120mm fans and three to five 92mm fans as well as a fan controller with at least 4 channels to go with them. Maybe some filters as well.
-RAM: 2 GB
-Graphics card: nVidia Geforce 6600GT (may be replaced by an ATI Rage Pro since no graphics performance is required)
+'''Motherboard'''
-===Planned purchases===
+I had my eyes on the ''Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6'' with four GbLAN ports, 10 SATAII ports etc, but it costs a shitload. I probably won't need more than what the ''Abit AB9 Pro'' has to offer, which is two GbLAN ports and 9 SATAII ports (plus one eSATA). I still need to confirm driver compatibility with Red Hat based OSes on the AB9 Pro.
-x 160-320 GB SATA HDDs; For use as system disks in a RAID 1 array.
+'''CPU'''
+Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2.4 GHz with four cores and 4 MB L2 cache per pair.
+'''RAM'''
+-4 GB of DDR2 RAM of any decent brand will do. Preferably two 2 GB sticks to have room for upgrades in the future, if more than 4 GB is needed.
+'''Graphics card'''
+A low-end graphics card for PCI-express. Mostly any will do as long as it doesn't try to share system memory.
+'''Storage'''
-Fan controller for 3.5" drive bay to replace current 5.25" fan controller.
+x 250 or 320 GB SATA HDDs (Western Digital RE/RE2, RE=Raid Edition with 5 year warranty); For use as system disks in a software RAID 1 array.
-Drive bay, 4 in 3 (four 3.5" internal bays in three 5.25" external slots, maybe the [http://www.komplett.se/k/ki.aspx?sku=306518 Cooler Master 4 in 3 module] at komplett.se). Hopefully this drive bay doesn't carry the vibrations too much to the chassi. I've grown to enjoy the silence achieved by not having hard drives directly in contact with the steel. Those vibrations can be really annoying.
+GB Western Digital (SE or RE) for additional storage.
+Possibly more since I need to replace three drives, two 200 GB and one 320 GB, that are close to failing.
 ==Software==