I did this little write up because I thought some of you guys may be interested in reading what goes in to running the site. The next couple of pages shows the sequence in which everything was done to take Itchy and Scratchy - Orsm.net's new servers - from bits and pieces in boxes and bags to becoming two kick ass servers.

Late last year I started tinkering with the idea of adding a second server to run the site. Things were just starting to slow down and the bandwidth the server plugged in to was getting a touch congested as more and more of you guys came here. After much consulting with friends, people in the know and very little research I decided to take the plunge and build a couple of servers instead of using a rented machine. Great idea. Simple in theory - not quite that way in implementation.

The first thing we did was work out what was required. It was decided early on that it was now time to go from a single server to two. We could have built one kick ass machine but I'd end needing a second one eventually so not much point. Next we had to figure out what would need to be run where - things like Apache, DNS, MySQL, PHP, mail and a whole heap of other things all had to be taken into consideration. There was no point setting them up to load balance eachother - too much screwing around involved. This way, one machine handles particular tasks. Itchy is primarily a just serving pages and stores all the html, images and php that you guys see. Scratchy handles video downloads, mail and MySQL stuff.

After that we compared the specs of the current and previous servers, our home computers, how they handled growth and traffic increases and what the future may hold all in aid of getting a better idea of how much horse power was required.

Whilst I didn't set a budget to work within, I tried as hard as possible to keep costs down. How to do this with out skimping was the hard part. I had a few suggestions that would have been unreal such as SCSI RAID but when you consider that each server would have needed SCSI/RAID cards and three SCSI drives each, the cost of the whole project would almost have doubled. The other thing we wanted to use was dual Xeon processors but once again cost was prohibitive for what we were doing.

Anyways after much deliberation and constant back and forward with Chris, Tim and myself we decided the following would cut it [the below is for 2 machines]:

2 x Intel Pentium IV 2.4Ghz 478- Boxed with HS & Fan; 512K NorthWood; 533FSB
1 x 52X LG Speed CD ROM Drive
4 x 40 Gb Western Digital 7200 RPM UATA 100; JB Model; 8Mb Cache
2 x D845PESV Intel D845PESV, Pentium 4 (533/667MHz) M/B for 333MHz DDR 533 AGP4X ATX PC2700
2 x Panasonic 1.44 MB FDD Drive
2 x Intel Pro/100-S, Desktop Adapter with i82550EY Fast Ethernet controller, 3DES 168Bit
4 x Direct PC 512MB PC2700 400MHz DDR RAM
2 x Sparkle PCI Nividia TNT-2 M64 Chipset
2 x 2u SVEC server cases w/ 300x power supply
2 x Server rails
2 x Promise FastTrack100 ATA100 PCI RAID 0,1 2-Channel Controller OEM

So in a nutshell EACH machine is a P4 2.4Ghz running on an Intel board with 1Gb of RAM, Promise RAID controllers [RAID 0] across dual 40Gb Western Digital hard drives all sitting in SVEC 2U cases with 300w power supplies. Not bad huh!?

A couple of people suggested I should have gone with Athlon processors but from what I have seen and read I don't think it was a viable option when you consider the servers were going to be on the otherside of the world from me. I've always used Pentiums and I've never had a problem with them - no need to change that now.

Getting the machines built wasnt too hard. Chris and I did it over a couple of days and didn't have a drama with any of the hardware I bought. Everything fitted like it was supposed to and Itchy and Scratchy were born.

Then came time to get an operating system installed on them both. Piece of piss I thought - I've installed Linux dozens of times. Note: Here's where I started to become frustrated. Seems the RAID controllers I chose to use dont have good Linux driver support.

After much fucking around and probably 15 attempts to get Red Hat, Debian and Mandrake installed, Tim waltzes in and gets Slackware running in about an hour. Bastard. This ofcourse was done after a couple of beers were consumed so if anything fucks up really badly we know who to blame. Spent the next day transferring all the site files off my home computer onto the servers. They're more or less ready by this stage.

Next hurdle to over come was shipping. Dropped them off on the Tuesday only to find out that they wont be shipped until Friday [not impressed]. They finally exit Perth, get shipped directly to Auckland in New Zealand, Los Angeles and then onto Dallas in Texas. After a few hassles with paper work and a mildly assertive email from myself the boxes were passed off to US Customs where they sat until Monday. Wednesday Perth time the servers have arrived at the colocation facility and are plugged in. Success!

Itchy and Scratchy also see a big increase in available bandwidth too. Up until now the site has run off a burstable 10Mb pipe meaning that the fastest the data can go through there is 10Mb. The problem with that was that over the last few months the site wasn't having too much trouble maxing out the link. We've now got 30Mb between to two machines which means everything should be nice and fast.

Anyways that about wraps up the story of how everything came together. The next few weeks of you guys surfing the site will tell the tale if it was all worth it I guess. It's been one of the most stressfull months I've ever had as well. So much shit I have had to learn and work out to make this go smoothly I'm amazed that you guys are actually reading this page!

One last thing - HUGE thanks to Chris, Tim and Chris M. Without their help this would never have happened.

Anyways, the next couple of pages are just progress photos. Check em out...