response 5 of 547:

Feb 26 00:51 UTC 2003

Now linked to Coop as Item 176; Garage 147

response 7 of 547:

Feb 26 13:39 UTC 2003

One think I would suggest is a rack-mount case.  While it's a little
more expensive, it's also probably a little more rugged and can easily
be fit into a colocation facility if, at some point in the future,
that becomes desirable.

I would suggest that, as part of this, grex either move out of the
pumpkin, or try to do as much as possible to make it a more habitable
place for the grex machine's.  In particular, the descriptions I've
heard of it like it's just too hot during the summer.  I suspect that
has a lot more to do with any of grex's system reliability problems
than any concerns of component quality or load.

response 9 of 547:

Feb 26 14:15 UTC 2003

Nearly all new hardware supports internal temperature monitoring.  If
OpenBSD supports this, we could monitor the CPU core and case
temperatures and see if they really are reaching unreasonable levels. 
That would, in my opinion, be a much better indication than the ambient
room temperature.
I know Linux supports reading most sensor chips via the 'sensors'
package, but I don't know if OpenBSD has support for any of this yet.

I agree a rack-mount case would be a good idea, but I don't feel too
strongly about it because it would be relatively easy to shift the
hardware into a rack-mount case later.

What brand of motherboard are you thinking of using?  Abit has had a lot
of problems with defective capacitors lately and maybe should be
avoided.  I'm not sure who makes the best AMD boards right now.

response 11 of 547:

Feb 26 15:31 UTC 2003

Grex's hardware reliability problems in the past few years have mainly
been:
 (1) DSL line flakiness.  Almost certainly not heat related.
 (2) random power weirdness.  Almost certainly not heat related.
(Unless
        you count all air conditioners in the state of Michigan.)
 (3) random disk failures.  These probably are heat related.
 (4) weird modem problems.  Wide range of potential causes.

The only one of the 3 we can control is (3).  *However* -- we've gone to
some effort to secure the best cooling we can given our environment.
Some of this has included the use of extra large enclosures and a fair
amount of extra room.  In a colocation, we'd have much less
space--smaller enclosures, less room, etc. Right there our improvements
go out the window.  No doubt things are much better in NJ, but here in
SE Mich, it's not hard to collect interesting tales of various
colocation heating and cooling disasters.  Backups are important - and
we definitely want to maintain our current advantage in terms of making
removable tape backups; this isn't just for disk failures, but also
covers floods and fires (both known risks in the local colocation
market) and vandals (a special and unique risk we also have to deal
with, which makes mirrored disks, normally a useful backup strategy,
much less attractive to us.)  When you measure up cost, cooling, and
backup convenience, the pumpkin suddenly starts looking a lot less bad.

I said that our disk disasters probably are heat related.  I suppose I
should expand on that.  We've had several failures.  We used to have
lousy disk enclosures.  Eventually, we resorted to using box fans.  It
was noisy and crude, but worked.  We eventually got better disk
enclosures.  Those have been basically adequate.  We have been luckier
in our failures than perhaps we deserve -- our failures have generally
given us notice, often show up during backups, so we've generally been
able to simply restore that last backup.  Some have shown up as heat
sensitivity - letting the disk cool often eliminates the errors (at
least long enough for that last backup).  In at least one memorable
case, the completely dead disk turned out to simply be packed with dust
-- cleaning it throughly resulted in proper operation, although we got
nervous and replaced it before it had a chance to turn traitor on us.
I'd like to think our luck is mostly due to backups, observation, and
paranoia.  But, to the extent that heat has played a factor, it may have
actually worked in our favour, although I'd hardly recommend it as a
good strategy.

Keep in mind that we're running mostly used disks of elderly vintage,
and basically running them until they give up the ghost This strategy is
guaranteed to eventually produce 100% mortality -- but it may
paradoxically produce more reliable storage meanwhile than constantly
purchasing new disks even though most of those won't fail before being
replaced.  Perhaps this just shows that you can prove anything you want
with statistics.

I'll be the first to admit the pumpkin is far from perfect, but even so,
I'd have to say that in terms of dealing with disk disasters, it still
comes out way ahead of what we could manage for colocation deals.  If
you're looking for that huge advantage that's bound to convince us to
move to colocation, this isn't it.  The certain convenience in terms of
access and space is known to us.

response 13 of 547:

Feb 26 15:58 UTC 2003

Besides, it would take Jim years to get set up to draw the copper wire for
the cabling.  And we don't want to run Grex on a refurbished 486, powered by
a bicycle generator.

response 15 of 547:

Feb 26 17:00 UTC 2003

How is the new system going to be financed?  Might it make some sense 
to look at how much money is going to be available?  Is Grex just going 
to write a check for the amount of the new computer?

I don't see a tape drive listed.

The computer I just ordered can have 2 GB installed.  Whatever Grex 
gets, it'd seem to me to make sense to max out the RAM.

response 17 of 547:

Feb 26 17:21 UTC 2003

The pumpkin does not have windows.  The owners might not appreciate a hole
in the wall made by grex for an air conditioner.

response 19 of 547:

Feb 26 18:12 UTC 2003

Ideally it would have been nice to have a fundraiser and buy hardware
based on the money raised plus what we have already set aside for upgraded
hardware.  But instead what we have is a bit of a time crunch.  Staff has
time to put this together, nowish, but a big chunk of the work needs to be
done before May. 

So instead of fundraiser first, purchase later, we are going to make a
leap of faith that the users will want this badly enough to donate what
they can, and get the project started.  Do folks think this is a
reasonable thing to do? 

response 21 of 547:

Feb 26 18:42 UTC 2003

Re #11: I'd also add that modern disks tend to run cooler.  I bet the
Pumpkin will be considerably cooler when Grex's old hardware is retired.

Good airflow should definately be a consideration when picking a case,
of course.  Thanks to the overclocker market, you can now get cases with
truely awe-inspiring numbers of fans.  Since noise isn't much of a
consideration where Grex is, we should take advantage of that.

Re #15: I'd guess our current tape drive will work with the new system.
 If I remember right it's an external SCSI drive.  These are quite
standardized; it'll just be a matter of the right cable, most likely.

response 23 of 547:

Feb 26 19:31 UTC 2003

Why is there a deadline of May, and what has to be accomplished by 
then?  Is the goal or plan to get Grex actively on the PC machine by 
then?

Why not start the fundraising plan now?  I bet we could get at least 
some idea how much money will be available by the time of the next 
Board meeting, if people are asked for pledges.  If there's a lot more 
(or less) money coming in for the upgrade than what's expected, it 
might affect what would be purchased.

response 25 of 547:

Feb 27 17:16 UTC 2003

Oops.  I thought you meant next month's Board meeting.

I'm not objecting to any deadlines, by the way, just asking for further 
information about them.

response 27 of 547:

Feb 27 18:53 UTC 2003

I think buying hardware now is wise.