[nflug] Part Time Contract Opportunity

Charles H. Root, III chazroot at oculente.com
Thu Feb 28 17:40:09 EST 2008


Hello Everyone,
 
Oculente, Ltd. has a part-time, ongoing contract opportunity available to
support one of our clients. They currently have four dedicated CentOS
servers housed with an outsourced web hosting provider. An overview of the
infrastructure and project work includes:

Infrastructure

Database Server (1x) with SoftLayer
2x QuadCore Xeon 5345 2.33GHZ (Clovertown) processors

(8 total cores)

4 GB FB-DIMM Registered 533/667 RAM

SA-SCSI RAID 10 Disc countroller

4x 73GB SA-SCSI 15k RPM drives

CentOS Linux 5 (64 bit)

MySQL version 5.0.22 installed

* One very-busy database

* no other major services running



Web Servers (3x) with SoftLayer
1x Dual Core Xeon 5130 2GHZ (Woodcrest) processor

(2 total cores)

2 GB Fb-DIMM Registered 533/667 RAM

SA-SCSI Controller

1x 73GB SA-SCSI 10k RPM drive

CentOS Linux 4.5 
Apache 2.0.59

Sendmail 8.13.1



SoftLayer Load-balancer clusters the three web servers.


All servers are connected on a private network, a second public network
connects them to the Internet.


One of the web servers is the master, with several cron jobs to generate
content and RSYNC the changes to the other servers.


Media Server (1x) with ThePlanet
2x AMD Opteron Dual-Core

4GB RAM

MySQL, Apache, SendMail

We use this for media files, email, newsletters, video channel, etc.



CDN Service with CacheFly
We have a contract with a content delivery service for the hosting of all
site images

A few minor cron jobs RSYNC the files to the service




Project Work


1) TOP PRIORITY: Database backup/mirror 
I'd like to install MySQL on one of the web servers (they're under-utilized)
and use it as a mirror of the live database to ensure we have a reliable
backup.

I'm much more concerned that it serve as a fool-proof recovery solution than
a fall-over in the event of a db problem.



2) SECONDARY PRIORITY: Database server tuning
We're pretty much running on the stock-box set-up provided by SoftLayer. I
would imagine that there would like be some degree of system tuning or
settings modifications that might greatly enhance the overall performance of
the machine.



3) THIRD PRIORITY: Database modifications
Back in the day, when things were much slower, we added a full-text index to
the table used to contain postings. This was great for full-text Boolean
searches, but now such searches take several seconds against the 3GB
full-text index... so the service is now disabled. I would imagine that
maintaining the full-text index introduces an unneeded degree of server load
each time a new post is added... can the full-text index be safely
disassociated in the database?



4) FOURTH PRIORITY: Contract Support
We need someone reliable to be our contract support and check in on the
boxes occasionally and ensure they're properly hardened and all is running
well... in addition to responding to any issues that might arise. 
 
Other considerations... the hardware list I gave you was deployed 7 months
ago and we've pretty much had to upgrade our hardware every 9-12 months over
the past four years (due to growth). Our traffic is currently 2x what it was
when the hardware was deployed, so we'd need your best-guess on how high is
up with these machines so we can consider how and when to upgrade again.

Qualified parties who are interested in this opportunity may forward their
resume/CV, references and hourly wage requirements to chazroot at oculente.com.
 
Please note that the candidate selected will be required to sign a Non
Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with the client. Please feel free to pass this
message along, but please no employment agencies and/or recruiters.
 
Best Regards,
 
Charles H. Root, III
President
 
Oculente, Ltd.
453 Porter Avenue
Buffalo, NY  14201
USA
 
v: 716.510.8961
f:  716.706.1301
 
 <http://www.oculente.com/> www.oculente.com
 
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