[SAC] Server quote/discussions

[Alex Mandel]

Daniel Morissette wrote:
> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>> Frank Warmerdam wrote:
>>> Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
>>>> I've reworked another quote, matching more closely the original quote,
>>>> but with more RAM and disk.  Our approved budget is $22k, so I'll
>>>> assume
>>>> 2 machines at ~10k each.  More comments/concerns?  I can scale back the
>>>> RAM and disk to line closer to the earlier quote if desired.
>>> Tyler,
>>>
>>> As I recall the motion at the board level, 15K was approved for what
>>> would
>>> likely be two servers.  Where does the 22K number come from?
>>
>> Oops took it from the agenda from the board meeting, not from the final
>> motion.  In the end the quote I got went down to ~17k for both.
>>
> 
> I didn't look into the quotes and the server requirements in detail, but
> for servers, I personally tend look for the best price/performance ratio
> (usually in the 3k$-5k$ range) and get multiple lower spec machines
> instead of a single higher end machine. In addition to giving you more
> processing power overall for your money, that gives you redundancy, and
> reduces the chances of a single service taking the whole infrastructure
> down.
> 
> Of course there are different schools of thought on that front, and I
> don't want to enter a religious debate, but I thought I'd share my point
> of view anyway.
> 
> 

The current plan is for 2 machines, and the implementation ideas being
discussed involve virtualization. Please see the following for detailed
ideas and estimations:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AifEHeRRT620dHF0ZDExSXFzSVlSQWxVcXRqUnBOQ1E&hl=en

I think at this point we've found good servers and can easily make the
price target with slight adjustments to the hard drives or ram. Those
quotes were with 500GBx8 drives and 72GB of ram per machine.

That's 3.5 TB RAID 5 and 3 TB RAID 6 compared with the original quotes
using 146 GB drives 1 TB, 876 GB

Moving down to 250 GB drives would probably cut $2-3 K and leave us with
1.7 TB or 1.46 TB. Or we could drop from 72GB or ram to 64GB of ram and
easily save the same amount.

Note all calculations were per server, so we are talking 2 TB across
both at minimum and up to 7 with both using the bigger of the drive options.

Thanks,
Alex