New GPWA Database and Forum Servers on Order

[MichaelCorfman]

I'm pleased to let everyone know we have finalized an order for several new servers to support the GPWA website.

Most importantly, we are ordering the hardware for a new MySQL server to replace the current one used to power the GPWA forum. Currently our MySQL server has 4GB of memory with an Intel Xeon E5430 processor. We're upgrading this to new server with an E5-2650 v2 processor and an initial configuration of 16GB of memory. You can see a comparison of the two processors here:

cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5430-vs-Intel-Xeon-E5-2650-v2

We are also planning to migrate the forum and the rest of the GPWA website to a pair of load-balanced web servers, to improve performance, to avoid temporary disruptions for activities like the rebooting of servers, and to improve resilience to hardware failures.

Hopefully the new hardware will translate into our members experiencing a better performing GPWA website.

We don't yet have an estimated date for migrating the site to the new servers (actually, we don't yet know when the new servers will arrive so we can begin the installation and migration process). We will keep everyone updated as timeframes are determined.

Michael

[universal4]

Hopefully you are gonna use the Kemp Loadmasters, I have personally found them to be the most robust....and fairly easy to manage.

<waving hands="" frantically="" as="" he="" jumps="" up="" and="" down=""> (waving hands frantically as he jumps up and down)I know the perfect spot we could park the old equipment......(as he immediately sends his shipping address to Michael)

<as he="" immediately="" sends="" his="" shipping="" address="" to="" michael="">

Rick
Universal4</as></waving>

[slotplayer]

little triva, when I worked at Baynetworks/Nortel, the CEO, Dave House had worked at Intel previously, it was said that his group (when he was at Intel) were the ones that came up with the marketing phrase "Intel Inside".

[universal4]

Cool story about the intel inside logo.

Funny, Nortel is the only manufacturer of a switch I have ever seen that when it decides it has had enough, it changes it's internal management password and the factory default reset never works after that. (most switches just die, Nortel just says "Stay out" and buy another one)

One of my old upstream providers gave me an old 16 port 10/100 that to this day I still have lying around with two perfectly good 8 port vlans, but no way to log in and manage the switch or change it's configuration....lol He gave it to me because I allowed him to grab one of my backup switched I had on the rack at the time.

After that episode I swore to never buy another Nortel switch again....two or three times over the years I have fired that up and tried the factory hack to get back in, but it just wants to be two 8 port switches now and you can not change it's mind....

Yes Anthony, electronics do have a mind of their own, and us Geeks can only control them if they decide they are willing to be subservient that day...

Glad to hear about the load balancing.

Rick
Universal4