[nflug] Routers... anybody?

Robert Meyer meyer_rm at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 28 16:24:19 EST 2007


I'm just repeating what I'm told.  I haven't actually seen the drawings for the power distribution.  A professional power team set it all up so I'm guessing that they did the right things.  I know that in the last power failure (last October), the A/C didn't fail.  That doesn't mean that it didn't shut down for the few seconds that it took the generator to come back up.  According to the folks that were here, the HVAC was the last thing on their minds when the power went out.  It continued to function 'cuz the servers never went down due to temperature and the room was still cold when they were checking everything out.

All I know is that everything was worked out when it was installed six years ago.

Cheers!

Bob
 
--
"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."
   --Leonardo da Vinci

----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Musone <mmusone at shatterit.com>
To: nflug at nflug.org
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 4:11:17 PM
Subject: RE: [nflug] Routers... anybody?





 
 


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The generator was sized to match  the UPS? Are you sure the HVAC
is running off of UPS? That wouldn’t be good. (not to mention, you’ll cut your
battery load time by probably a factor of 4 and damage your UPS) You should
have the HVAC on the generator feed. In total, the generator should be sized
for UPS + HVAC.
 

  
 

Mark
 

  
 

  
 





From:
nflug-bounces at nflug.org [mailto:nflug-bounces at nflug.org] On Behalf Of Robert
Meyer

Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 4:00 PM

To: nflug at nflug.org

Subject: Re: [nflug] Routers... anybody?
 







  
 



Well, right now, we have a huge UPS with an auto-starting
generator.  We have multiple server redundancy for just about every
service that we're handling now.  For critical databases, we have two or
three servers with automatic partitioning out of failed servers (thank you mon
and LVS), round robin load balancing of our web servers via the current
firewall/router (manual partitioning of failed servers ATM), and have migrated
some of our databases to a fully redundant SAN.  I think that covers most
things.  I use SSH and keys with scripts to handle administration of
multiple servers.



Right now, I'm evaluating the ISP/firewall issue since we only have a single
pipe.  We would like to have two connections (via different paths) so that
we don't get killed in the event of a fiber-seeking backhoe.  I don't know
if we're going to be able to afford to upgrade that at the moment but I'm
investigating.  We may just get a new firewall and a spare and just keep
the single line for now.  Apparently, in six years of operation, there
hasn't been a single failure attributable to the ISP but as soon as I write
this, it may happen.  We actually have a special, environment controlled
room for the equipment with it's own A/C and power feeds from the UPS. 
The UPS is currently running at about 19% capacity so we have room to
grow.  The generator was sized to match the UPS.



Our application is web based with a MySQL backend (there's other stuff, too but
ancilliary).  We know that the growth will be in numbers of queries. 
The web servers are essentially sleeping most of the time, so there's head room
there.  We just migrated the heaviest hit databases to blade servers with
fiber connects to the SAN which has greatly improved that performance to the
point where it's not an issue and won't be for at least a doubling of the
database size and a factor of 10 in database hits.  Increasing the
database size is as simple as extending the LUNS on the SAN and extending the
filesystem (using LVM).



Yeah, we've thought about this stuff.  I just need to get the external
network to a similar level of redundancy.  We're not taxing our bandwidth
at this point but a loadbalanced, auto-failover connection to the ISP would be
nice.



Cheers!



Bob
 



 
 




--

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with
your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always
long to return."

--Leonardo da Vinci
 



  
 



----- Original Message ----

From: Erek Dyskant <erek at blumenthals.com>

To: nflug at nflug.org

Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 3:42:27 PM

Subject: Re: [nflug] Routers... anybody?





On Fri, 2007-12-28 at 11:14 -0800, Robert Meyer wrote:

> Well, that's where I'm trying to go with this.  We have a single
internet connection and our business 

> clients use the web to get to us so if the ISP connection drops, we lose
business, quickly. 



By the time you go up to redundant connection and all the things that go

with it, it's time to also look at issues like server redundancy, power,

administration style, etc.  With the extra infrastructure factors,

you'll need to evaluate if it's still worthwhile to host in your office

or if you should switch to colocation/managed service.



There are exceptions, but for business-critical servers, the colocation

route is just about always better.  You'll pay less for more reliable

bandwidth, and not have to manage the connection redundancy, physical

security, or backup power, assuming that you go with a provider you

trust.



Before going forward with a second local loop, you should put some

serious thinking time into how you want to grow the infrastructure.





--Erek





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