Geograph servers coming to life

Geograph's new serversWell, here they are, racked up and ready to roll. This setup will breath some fresh life into Geograph which is struggling to cope with its popularity at the moment. Here’s a few factoids about the setup, if anyone wants to know more, just ask and I’ll write about it.

  • The 2U unit is called “Jam” and has 6 400GB SATA drives in a RAID5 array with a hot spare, providing 1.6TB of storage. It also has dual 3GHz Xeon CPUs and 4GB RAM. This machine provides photo storage and the database
  • There are 3 1U units called “Toast”, “Scone” and “Crumpet” again with dual 3GHz Xeon CPUs and 4GB RAM. These are the main webservers
  • There is a 1U unit called “Tea” with a single 3Ghz Pentium 4 with 4GB RAM, this is primarily a load balancer
  • We also have a remote power switch and a remote KVM switch, allowing us to perform most maintainance remotely
  • All the servers run Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, with the exception of “Jam” where we had problems booting from the RAID array after installation. Jam runs Debian Sarge instead.
  • We are moving away from SourceForge for the code and bug tracking, using our own installation of Trac and Subversion instead.
  • The load balancing will be carried out by HAProxy, which will allow us to carry out a very smooth changeover. We’ll simply proxy the old server right up until we’re ready to go live, at which point we have a short period of downtime while we synchronise the databases.

Here’s a few more pictures. Exciting stuff – click for full size goodness.

Front of servers
This is the front. Woooo!
Back of the servers…and here is the back. Check out that neat cabling job!


Soon as we’re ready for the big switchover, we’ll announce it on the site….almost ready now!

5 thoughts on “Geograph servers coming to life”

  2. michael ely

    Re the big switchover. I recall my first venture into electronics when I changed a plug for a friend. With a finger on the switch I said.”Wait for the bang”. I flicked the switch – you guessed it – BANG! I wish you all better luck.

    This little trial thingy looks cool.

    Best wishes to all at Geograph Towers.

  3. Kato

    Nice. Being a compulsive organizer, I was particularly attracted to your nice cable job.

    Invest in velcro straps instead of plastic tie wraps. They survive changes and changeouts with minimal effort and are inexpensive.

  4. Smiffy

    Cabling always starts out like that, but ends up looking like a snakepit in a year EVEN IF YOU NEVER TOUCH IT.

    Same phenomenon as affects garden hoses.

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