Project: Rackmount Overkill

I wanted to step up the "overkill" another notch. I've been using a Smoothwall based system (p2/p3 with 512mb of RAM) that is starting to get old; I don't trust it to stay running much longer. I came across another firewall, similar to Smoothwall (runs as the OS, web interface, etc), but "enterprise" in quality.

Behold: Astaro!

Luckily for me, they provide a "home version". It basically is the full enterprise version minus a few features (router load balancing, clustering, etc). While I'd like to cluster the two Compaq servers, I really don't want to know how much they want for the full version.

What to use as the router though? They state a "1ghz or better processor" on their requirements page, my Smoothwall doesn't even come close to that. I've had 3x dual Pentium 3 based server laying around doing nothing, so I nabbed one of those. Two had drives in RAID 1 and the other had 4 sleds for the drives, but no RAID. The ones in RAID 1 are my Compaq servers; I also have a ton of spare power supplies for them, which made my decision that much easier. Installed it last night and got it configured, going to try and push it live tonight.

I noticed that I have not posted pictures of my two Compaq servers. They are 1u in size, dual Pentium 3's (800mhz), 2gb of RAM and 2x ~16gb SCSI drives in RAID 1. I'll see if I can get some pictures later tonight...

Pictures of the new router!

Thid, how you still have any eardrums left is beyond me o_o All that noise, right by your keyboard area

Actually, it isn't too bad. You really get used to it.

thideras said:

Actually, it isn't too bad. You really get used to it.

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I'm already tired of my PCPC 510 SLI. That's far too loud for me... and it's time for me to retire it.

Aynjell said:

I'm already tired of my PCPC 510 SLI. That's far too loud for me... and it's time for me to retire it.

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You can't compare a single "loud" power supply to 20 high speed fans (and 1 blower) running in tandem

thideras said:

You can't compare a single "loud" power supply to 20 high speed fans (and 1 blower) running in tandem

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Sure I can. What you're missing, though, is it's not a comparison, but rather a comparison point used to compare your tolerance and mine.

Obviously yours is a lot higher. I'd of scrapped the project already due to noise. If my single PSU is too loud for my taste, what would a whole rack of noisy servers do to me?

Aynjell said:

Sure I can. What you're missing, though, is it's not a comparison, but rather a comparison point used to compare your tolerance and mine.

Obviously yours is a lot higher. I'd of scrapped the project already due to noise. If my single PSU is too loud for my taste, what would a whole rack of noisy servers do to me?

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Mmmm....I see what you mean, kind of. Think of it this way, my servers are like the inside of your car when going down the highway. Yes, it is loud (compared to being stopped), but it is mainly background noise that you drown out with music or just ignore it. That is basically what I do. The fans I use don't really have a whine to them like my super-high-speed Delta fans, it is just mainly a faint hum with air movement.

Going to cover Astaro a little bit more. It is an enterprise class firewall made free to home users. Those familiar with Smoothwall will be able to switch to this easily, as it has about the same hardware requirement. To those not familiar with Smoothwall, it runs as a standalone OS. It does not require high end hardware unless you are pushing tons of traffic through it and are checking every last packet (in detail) and want no delay. I'm running mine on a dual p3 server and it never goes above 20% CPU usage.

The UI, in my opinion, is much cleaner than Smoothwall and easier to navigate. It also shows statistics cleaner. I also have it setup to email weekly configuration backups to my gmail account and to email daily statistics so that I can keep an eye on the firewall without having to watch actively.



While getting it setup took a bit of time to find out what was causing issues and to get it configured properly, it was completely worth it. Ping times are down, internet speeds have gone up and I'm no longer relying on old and outdated hardware.

I'm thinking about going back to a linux based host system. I might make a few changes to it though.

Hardware:
I'd really like to add another Perc5/i and hard drives, but I just don't have the money right now. I'm also going to use my spare servers/computers as testing beds for the "production" server. This allows me to make sure that updates go through properly, test new programs or just do whatever the heck I want without fear of having my fileserver down.

Operating systems:
I keep wandering back to linux based operating systems. I have no issue running a linux based server as long as I don't hit many snags with it. The main reason I went back to Windows was CPU usage when sharing files. If I was moving data to the server, I'd see two cores completely pegged out; I see that as unacceptable. I also understand that it was likely something that I was doing wrong or needed to change. I'll list some issues out at the end that I need to address before I can switch back to linux.

Filesystem:
Undecided between XFS/JFS/others. I'm going to use VMWare to run Debian to see how much I can get used to it and see how good it really is. I'm open to suggestions, but I'd rather not use Solaris or Redhat. I'd consider CentOS again.

Issues I need to resolve:

*Backup folders WITHOUT paid software (aka: Acronis). I have two legit copies of Acronis, but I don't like the proprietary format that it uses and I've hit some snages when trying to restore files. I got a really good deal on the software and it does an amazing job, but I need more than 2 copies and I have no money; so buying more is out of the quesiton. I'd rather just have a gzip'd file or individual folders as backups. I believe that rsync can help with this, I just need to find a suitable Windows based client.

*Hostnames. This sounds silly, but even when I give the server a name like "thideras-server" and the host OS is linux, I can never use "thideras-server" to access shares or services, I always need to use the IP address. This isn't a huge issue and more of an annoyance, but something I'd like to fix. This is mainly so that users who don't know anything about my server, can still use it.

*Monitoring of system resources. I didn't have a really good way (graphs, etc) to monitor the server. CPU usages, memory usage, hdd usage/activity, network usage and many more; the more detailed, the better. A web interface (internal/external) would be preferred, even if just to "see" the usage.

*Understand accessing shares better. I had a really hard time with users/usergroups and shares when I used CentOS/Solaris as the OS. I'm not sure what confused me, but if anyone knows a good explanation, I'm listening.

*Understand SAMBA better. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but I was getting terrible throughput for gigabit networks (15-20mb/sec) and massive CPU usage (two cores at 100%) when transferring files. The two processes were SAMBA, that was clear via 'top', but I don't understand why. It seems ridiculous that it would need that much CPU, so I'll chalk that up to being a linux server nub. I've found a few guides that "explain" what each flag does in the setup file, but they fail to show examples or go into great detail. I'm left guessing or trying to figure out what everything does.

*Find a FTP server. I'm spoiled. I've been using FileZilla in Windows and I absolutely love how easy it is to setup.

I'll think of others, but I'm extremely interested in switching back to Linux and away from Windows. I know I can do it, I just need information or a good starting base. I believe the extra servers will help me since I don't need to worry about downtime. I'll also add more if I think of it.

No one has any input? I'm surprised by the lack of activity/responses. See my post on the previous page if you didn't read it.

I'm currently installing Debian to VMWare on the server. Going to test the different partitions by creating one with XFS, JFS, etc. I'm looking for one that can exceed my storage capabilities in the future (exabytes, etc) so I don't have to keep looking for a new FS when I upgrade the system.

thideras said:

Filesystem:
Undecided between XFS/JFS/others. I'm going to use VMWare to run Debian to see how much I can get used to it and see how good it really is. I'm open to suggestions, but I'd rather not use Solaris or Redhat. I'd consider CentOS again.

Click to expand...

I need to test this in a full blown environment. I'm only getting around 100mb/sec read off the array, but I'm running Debian in an virtual machine. Since it doesn't have direct access to the hard drive, the request has to go through Windows/NTFS and I think that is slowing it down a bit. Overall, speed isn't bad.

*Monitoring of system resources. I didn't have a really good way (graphs, etc) to monitor the server. CPU usages, memory usage, hdd usage/activity, network usage and many more; the more detailed, the better. A web interface (internal/external) would be preferred, even if just to "see" the usage.

Click to expand...

Just installed Cacti and waiting for it to get enough data to graph. I won't know it is working until I give it some time.

*Understand SAMBA better. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong, but I was getting terrible throughput for gigabit networks (15-20mb/sec) and massive CPU usage (two cores at 100%) when transferring files. The two processes were SAMBA, that was clear via 'top', but I don't understand why. It seems ridiculous that it would need that much CPU, so I'll chalk that up to being a linux server nub. I've found a few guides that "explain" what each flag does in the setup file, but they fail to show examples or go into great detail. I'm left guessing or trying to figure out what everything does.

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I found that the high CPU is normal when transferring large files. Small files did around 7-11% cpu usage.


I also need to get printing working on linux. Might take me a bit to test this.

thideras said:

Mmmm....I see what you mean, kind of. Think of it this way, my servers are like the inside of your car when going down the highway. Yes, it is loud (compared to being stopped), but it is mainly background noise that you drown out with music or just ignore it. That is basically what I do. The fans I use don't really have a whine to them like my super-high-speed Delta fans, it is just mainly a faint hum with air movement.

Click to expand...

Something I failed to comment on but should have:

Drown out with music is a novel concept. What if it's the music that's the problem? What if the sound of the power supply is causing me to enjoy my music less? What if music isn't just background noise, but a primary source of entertainment? With open headphones, it's not really an option.

As of right now, my audio chain is worth close to a grand, if you count my 3 pairs of headphones I can choose from at will.

X-Fi Titanium Championship Edition - About 200$
Little Dot I+ w/ Sylvania GB408A (rare, expensive) - About 200$
Grado SR325i w/ Grado G Cushion Pads - About 350$
Audio Technica ATH-AD700 - About 100$
Sony MDR-V6 - About 70$

So right there, with just what I use most often, that's 750$. Just to listen to music. Background noise is exactly that, background noise that I have to put up with. Why destroy such a premium experience with so much background noise? (Because I can't afford the quiter PSU and more appropriately specced fans). I'd like to get my office silent but that's unfortunately not an option, but getting my server fast enough is primary at the moment, well getting my WC back up is primary, with a raid card taking close second and after that, silence.

BTW thid, I'm working on a server myself, but my needs are a bit different. Running into similar issues as you though... next step is definitely a RAID card. Do you still reccomend a Perc 5/i after extensive use? This'd go into an nForce 4 mainboard piloted by a 3800X2 running Vista (potentially Server 2008 if I can get about making media sharing work).

Aynjell said:

Something I failed to comment on but should have:

Drown out with music is a novel concept. What if it's the music that's the problem? What if the sound of the power supply is causing me to enjoy my music less? What if music isn't just background noise, but a primary source of entertainment? With open headphones, it's not really an option.

As of right now, my audio chain is worth close to a grand, if you count my 3 pairs of headphones I can choose from at will.

X-Fi Titanium Championship Edition - About 200$
Little Dot I+ w/ Sylvania GB408A (rare, expensive) - About 200$
Grado SR325i w/ Grado G Cushion Pads - About 350$
Audio Technica ATH-AD700 - About 100$
Sony MDR-V6 - About 70$

So right there, with just what I use most often, that's 750$. Just to listen to music. Background noise is exactly that, background noise that I have to put up with. Why destroy such a premium experience with so much background noise? (Because I can't afford the quiter PSU and more appropriately specced fans). I'd like to get my office silent but that's unfortunately not an option, but getting my server fast enough is primary at the moment, well getting my WC back up is primary, with a raid card taking close second and after that, silence.

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Yeah, I don't have really good sound equipment. I just use $40 headphones (Sennheiser HD 202) and a Logitech Z5500 .___.

BTW thid, I'm working on a server myself, but my needs are a bit different. Running into similar issues as you though... next step is definitely a RAID card. Do you still reccomend a Perc 5/i after extensive use? This'd go into an nForce 4 mainboard piloted by a 3800X2 running Vista (potentially Server 2008 if I can get about making media sharing work).

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Yes, I'd recommend it unless you want to drop more money or need something else. Being able to have an eight drive RAID 5 array is extremely easy and good performance wise.

I also have Cacti up and running on the Debian test server:

http://208.107.49.99/cacti

Username: guest
Password: guest

Click on which graph you want to review and it should load. I'm working on adding my firewall/router to the list.

I closed the window and tried to go back and get access denied. Weird?

Aynjell said:

I closed the window and tried to go back and get access denied. Weird?

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That happened when I used Internet Explorer, I don't know why. Firefox doesn't have an issue with it.

im unable to see the graphs :S

SuperMiguel said:

im unable to see the graphs :S

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Did you click the links? They don't show on the main page.

thideras said:

That happened when I used Internet Explorer, I don't know why. Firefox doesn't have an issue with it.

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It did it with my Firefox install. Using version 3.5.5