CVGM.net - Chiptune, Retro & Video Game Music

Hi,

Earlier this week, we experienced a small DNS outage on the site, which altogether lasted about 16 hours. The fault was caused by a defective slave drive in the server and causing the whole thing to lock up randomly. Since the data centre has removed the drive, there doesn't seem to be any more problems for the time being, but I think it is just a matter of time before something else breaks.

The servers that CVGM currently use are rented dedicated servers, and we use 2 of them. The main one is the CVGM core, which houses the data & files needed to run CVGM. This is an old server (from early 2008) running dual Xeon 3.4 CPU's (PassMark CPU rating: 1151). The 2nd dedi box is a little newer, running a dual core AMD Opteron 170 (PassMark CPU Rating: 1058) and holds the DNS, Streams, email and other services (such as backups). This 2nd server has been plagued with motherboard problems in the past, with the last major outage being caused by a defective CMOS. It also has to be rebooted every 48 hours or it goes a bit loopy

After talking to the data center, they have suggested that I put together a server of my own and have them host the unit in their colocation unit. This would drastically reduce my monthly costs of hosting the site (just over 50%), and also allow me more control over the hardware the site is running on. If something needs fixed, I can replace or upgrade it without too much hassle and not worry about how old the parts are, and if/when they will fail. I also want to make this happen before a really bad data loss occurs.

So, I have spent some time looking at various components and put together a list of stuff I want to put into a new server for CVGM. This new box will most likely run OpenVZ, so I can consolidate the 2nd box into it, and control the streams etc. from there (as they don't use many resources except for bandwidth).

Proposed Server Hardware
I have tried to keep to using components that have been rated heavily by the community for both reliability and ease of maintenance, seeing as the unit will be off-site from where I live, I need to keep physical maintenance to a minimum. Below is a list of the common components for this.

Motherboard: ASUS M5A99X EVO AMD 990X (TigerDirect Link) - $149
Processor: AMD FX-8150 8-Core 8Mb L3 Cache, 8Mb L2 Cache, 3.6Ghz (PassMark Rating: 8253) (TigerDirect Link) - $249
Memory: Corsair DDR-3 1600MHz 16Gb (4x4Gb) (TigerDirect Link) - $109
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200rpm, 64Mb Buffer, 6Gb/Sec (TigerDirect Link) - $129
Power: Corsair 650 Watt TX650 V2 (TigerDirect Link) - $99
Video: Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 512mb (TigerDirect Link) - $20
CD/DVD: Lite-On DVD Writer SATA (TigerDirect Link) - $24
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite Mid Tower (Black) (TigerDirect Link) - $49

Total Parts Cost: $828
Shipping: ~$40-$60

How You Can Help
As with any major upgrade that I do on the site, I will ask if anyone wishes to donate a small amount to the costs involved. This is a completely optional choice, as I plan to pay for all the hardware myself in the next couple of months minus whatever donations the site receives between now and then. CVGM will always remain free, without adverts, and without any interfering of the audio streams. If you really like listening to the site, even donating just $1 would be grately appreciated. If the ChipIn widget does go over the requested amount, then those funds will be used on other things for the site.

I have set up a ChipIn widget to assist in collecting donations. It should appear on the right hand side of every page shortly after this post, or you can visit the page directly on their website by going HERE. If you would like to donate to us in any other ways, please get in touch with me through the PM system on the site, or via email to andy@andykellett.com A link to the ChipIn for non-Flash users is at http://www.chipin.com/contribute/id/282374e9f8dd904e

If anyone has any questions, comments or suggestions for better hardware, additional hardware, or stuff in general about this upgrade please post a reply to this thread. Thanks to everyone for their support on this.

Andy Kellett

I'll try do donate in a couple of weeks when my allowance comes in, it's hopefully going up soon after my medical assessment.

To note, that motherboard should be very stable. I have the AMD 970 version and a Phenom II X4, and I have yet to run into any system-wide crash, and I've had it for about 5-6 months now.

Hi,

Thanks to everyone who has donated so far If it keeps going at this rate, we can start the migration a little sooner I think the only addition that I will add to the hardware afterwards is a couple more NIC cards, which are not very expensive. They will help with adjusting the network loads from the site and the streams, instead of feeding it all through one network adapter.

@Koli: I know a couple of people who have used that board in servers and they told me its quite solid, which is why i picked it. I tried to stay with components that have been rated very highly by many other users.

I have been experimenting with virtualization software this weekend, and I am going to end up using the free VMWare vShpere Hypervisor 5.0 software on the box. I've ran a couple of different VM's on this test box here, and it seems to balance the loads very well. Theres still a lot to learn with this software, though i really like the configuration tools that it offers, and provides realtime graphs & historical data to show where potential problems may be cropping up. I can also shift handles & other limits around in Linux, unlike some VPS providers who prefer to lock them at a very low value count (which screws up Demovibes after a short period).

Thanks again to everyone

Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200rpm, 64Mb Buffer, 6Gb/Sec (TigerDirect Link) - $129

Be careful with this drive - quite a few DOA's and failing after a few weeks.. Just a heads up

I would contribute but I certainly have no any additional money to give away atm and probably not until I enter into working life (hopefully next year).

I sure will spend in the next 2 month, assumed that someone update my tracks from the cvgm ftp server!

@FishGuy: More NICs to distribute network load?

Good lords, what kind of traffic are you expecting on your site?!?

My VMWare Host server has ONE NIC, and it's hosting, besides the CVGM relay, the Nectarine master server, a relay, all my web hosting stuff, several game servers, some personal stuff and other things.

Trust me, you will NOT need separate NICs for CVGM.

Hi,

Im still rolling a few different ideas around for this, I wasnt sure if adding more NIC cards was worth it or not, but if it has a single Gbit connection, then I guess it really doesn't matter.

I've also been talking with Dell about getting a small PowerEdge rack server instead. The problem there, is they want to oversell me everything, and no matter who I seem to talk to, the price always varies up and down and I must have specific maintenance packages etc. We have several 710's at work, and they work very nice indeed. I was also given 6x SCSI 10K 146Gb HD's to use if I want them.

You won't even need gigabit for CVGM, absolutely not. Necta uses between 10 and 20 MBit for streaming and web site, just for comparison. For a gigabit connection at your hoster, you'll quite probably pay considerably more than for a regular 100 MBit connection. E.g. at my hoster, a gigabit port costs 39€ extra per month.

Though when you get a new mainboard now, it will surely have a gigabit NIC anyway, and it's sure nice to have fast speed while you install the thing, so that's okay.

Hi Fish How's The Project Going Bro??

Hi Ankh. Holding off on purchasing the big gear for a couple more weeks at least, been extremely swamped at work with some new projects, so will do it when things calm down a bit and I have plenty of spare time to get it up and running before mailing the server to the data center

FG is currently busy with collecting components for the server case:

[img removed]

Hi,

It's been a bit of time since I last talked about this, so i'll update on whats going on. I have purchased a new server, its a Dell PowerEdge 2950 III server. Has 2x Xeon 3.16Ghz Quad Core CPU's. A decent video tutorial of the server and whats in it (similar model) can be found at the bottom.

I have access to ram for the machine, the only thing left I need to save up for now is to buy some decent Hard Drive's for it, as it only comes with 2x80Gb drives. Ebay sell used 146Gb drives such as This One for about $40 so I might start to invest in one a month, until I fill up all the slots on the front of the unit. If someone wants to buy any xmas presents for CVGM, we will take a Few Of These and they can be shipped directly here

The plan is to install VMWare ESXi Free on this thing, set it up with the web handling & also the stream server, as well as the CVGM server. Once thats done, it'll be shipped off to the datacenter at Joes for insertion to their racks. The cost saving for hosting using your own hardware is much less (almost 55%) however if there are any problems, then its up to me to send replacement parts etc.

I'll keep you guys informed with whats going on with this as I progress with it Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nK80uC9aHM

Forgive me my uber-noobzor question, but isn't buying refurbished hard-drives risky? Only 90 days of
warranty looks like they were not fixed in manufacturer's specialized service centers. Do you plan
to run them in RAID? And I am curious - how much space is CVGM using now?

We have a bunch of these servers at work, and the drives do last an incredibly long time. Each drive will be scanned for any defects, smart checked etc. I plan to run a simple raid setup, where one drive mirrors the other. In the event that one of the drive fails, its a simple task of popping out the drive thats gone bad, and putting in a spare to keep things going smoothly. I can send spare parts to the datacenter at any time, so i'd like to have at least one spare drive on hand.

CVGM uses about 180gb of space right now, with all the music and images for the different songs. I keep a semi-current backup on a portable HD, and I keep a much more frequent backup of the DB.

New CVGM server is here and working Its almost time to retire the smaller server next to it in this picture



Its currently running the free version of VMWare ESXi and I have set up a few experimental VM slots with some various linux & Windows installs, and its running great Once I get some decent hard drives in this thing, it will be shipped off, so I can start making some people mad when we shut down for a day or so to move everything over

These drives would be perfect to go in there (we ideally need 3) so I hope I can still get them when I have some spare cash soon Several people have asked how they can donate/help out with this, so I placed our Donate button back on the main page. If you would like to donate in other ways (such as buying drives) send us a private message, so I can give you my shipping address. Many thanks to everyone who have already donated

I'll keep everyone informed as to when the expected time will be to start migration Thanks

Purchased the first new HD from http://www.ebay.com/itm/310649616594?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649. Thanks again to everyone who sent donations so far