Database server hardware has been ordered (to replace the order that we had to cancel due to a vendor issue). We expect it in by the middle of this coming week and will install it immediately.

After that we work on the front end web servers.

 

Thanks for the update Ken, keep up the good work!

 

Sounds good Ken. Thanks for the intel

 

cool to hear, your doin a great job

 

Good news!

 

Any specs? are you still going to post the "fun" you had with the 1st vendor?

 

Thanks for the update and all of your work to the site!! -Ed

 

Okay, new database server is in place. Only a few hours downtime this afternoon.

8 gig RAM, RAID 5 hard drive array, 2 dual core 2.8 GHz 64-Bit AMD Opteron CPUs.

We're not out of the woods yet with load. This is only half the equation. Front end web servers which attach to the database server will be load-balanced and another system or two added.

 

Wow... sitting here looking at database loads.... 1%-9% average.

 

sweet.....

 

Nice Job Ken. The site does seem to be loading MUCH faster. Thanks for the update.

 

Funny story...

The installation should have taken 1-2 hours tops but took about 4. Apparently the power circuit our servers were on had too much load on them. After installing the new server and plugging in the monitor from the "crash cart" I powered them up. Turning on the monitor overloaded the circuit and threw the breaker! About 30 servers instantly powered off! Yikes!

They moved our systems to another circuit and restarted everything. Problem was that our systems were booting (ie, reading/writing the hard drives) when the power died. When they restarted I had to run integrity checks on all the hard drives.

 

Sounds like you need UPS units even in the server center.

 

Kinda reminds me of :

To err is human but to really screw it up takes a computer.

Good job Ken, been in those shoes before - Thank God for back ups. At least you didnt loose any HDD's

 

yikes ken. do manage any sleep lately with all this work. but it surely shows the site is loading much better. great work .