Hello all,

I've been contemplating whether to get a new server for BA or not, since recently you may have noticed the site becoming sluggish and often stops responding for minutes at a time. This is because of spiking CPU load due to increasing traffic. However the decision is not easy due to many factors, the main one being money, the second being storage space on any new server.

At the moment we have:


There are two servers to choose from that are of equal price to the current one:

or


As you can see, the choice is difficult. On both new servers we get more processing power, but we get slightly less space, and less bandwidth on one too.

For future proofing, I'd be inclined to go with the Q6600 server, since it has more RAM and CPU, but the bandwidth puts me off a little bit. To keep the un-metered bandwidth, we can go with less RAM/CPU, but it's not quite so future proof.

Since we have server bonding for the FTP now, we don't need all of the space on the BA server, since extra is off-loaded elsewhere, but we do want to keep the popular stuff on BA since the other server isn't as fast. The idea of a private torrent tracker has also come to mind which will help in the long run as well, since there will always be at least 1 seed (myself) from home, and any super-seeding on the BA server for popular and new files. This is why the decision is so difficult.

The other difficulty is the setup cost for a new server is £49 on-top of the first months rental. I might be able to get this waived for being a long term loyal customer, but I might not be able to either. That I will have to find out.

The question is, what do you think we should do? Please vote in the poll, and post any comments or questions.

Thanks,

Andy

Quad Core.

To be quite honest, the lower bandwidth isnt top notch, but the processor and RAM power is.

well i voted for the quad
but if the private tracker is a serious option
then the duel core is a better choice

Well, as long as BA isnt being slashdotted (no one does whole dumps of the server contents), then BA should be fine with the Core 2 Quad. If you're going to run a tracker, well then get with the Core 2 Duo.

quad means 4 and duo means 2...

so i think you have that backwards

I didnt mean it backwards.
The C2D has 100Mbps unmetered, while the C2Q only has 3TB 100Mbps unmetered after that 10Mbps unmetered.

never mind you agree with me abut the tracker would be better with the c2d

Running a tracker, even for the whole of BA, isn't that processor intensive anyway.
But PHP is processor intensive.

The one with the Core 2 DUO. I hear thats the best, though If you think money is a problem, you do not have to get a new server. Just making a suggestion. You can always get a server in the near future .

I am gonna say trash windows.. you save £15.. but I know you never will so we'll leave it at that.

I do have a rather nice idea about how you could get windows running on it using your own license.. something with the vKVM but a lot more genius than other ideas I have heard on the OVH forum. I'll talk with you about that on MSN.

As for the hardware. Go for the SP mini. It is providing more bandwidth/transfer and 2 disks.. so no slowdown when people are on the FTP. The future proofing is not such a problem.. if you are paying monthly then you can easily upgrade later on.. remember in another year the OVH offerings will probably be even better for the same price.

Core 2 Duo.

Due to 3TB limit then 10MBps.

Core 2 Duo.
Why?
Because at this choise we have 2 Disks. For example, when smb downloads Windows 7 Build (which is on the 2nd HDD), another person who downloads Windows 95 Build (which is on 1st HDD) won't have problems with speed and HDD will be alive longer.

And I think 3TB Limit is very little limit. And how we can see for the last 20 years OSes got a size from 200Kb to 3-4Gb!!!
And how we can see, here is about 1k of members. So, when 500 members downloads new Windows 8 build (for example, 2-3Gb), and another number of memebers downloads another builds we'll have the situation when the second leaked build we'll download at 10Mbpt/s.

And I didn't say about members which have no builds... They can download about 1Tb everybody.

I think its fair to mention that moment we average ~2-3TB maximum and have for the 18 months. The last 3 months has been significantly lower, but this is an off-peak time of year with everyone going back to school/university. We did 3.7TB in one month once in 2008, and never anywhere near since.

EDIT: Nevermind, I made a typo in the data. Graph irrelevent.

Its tricky
I think the quad core tho, cos not all the stuff is on BA's server therefore not as much bandwidth is needed

It make sense to upgrade to quad-core because it is only slightly more expensive than dual core. Of cause price of 2GB of additional RAM will make the pricetag greater.

They are the same price, as previously mentioned...

I think that 3TB at 100Mbps would be enough. The most likely reason that download number dropped is Windows 7 RTM. Before then, many of our members were constantly getting the newest builds of Windows 7 from the server. The server limit would not likely to exceed 3TB until Windows 8 beta is release.


Thanks, I went to reread it.

That was my thinking. And if we go with torrents it will be less again.

As you can see we're having difficulties already... I just had to kill all http/mysql/php and restart them to get the site back online.

I have always download Windows 7 build from torrent to not put strain on the server. It should be made clear to our members to use out server as last resource for things that cannot be download from anywhere else like many longhorn builds.

FTP puts virtually no strain on the server at all. However PHP/MySQL does a lot and that is what is causing the slow downs.

Well, at least it will make us be able to cope with the 3TB limit at 100Mpbs3 if Windows 8 beta happen at appear should we go with the Q6600 server which I support.

I wonder what happened in April 2008. O_o, 3TB of upload. Uhhh...Windows 7 leak I'm guessing?

We had server issues and had to copy everything back to the server about 3 times...

I wonder where the Windows 7 6519 leak occured.