For a while now I have been having hardware problems on my server. The SCSI system would drop interupts during load and sometimes it would throw errors like these. None of this has yet resulted in data loss but there has been a few crashes as a result.
After trying to swap the machine with an identical one and having the same problems again I decided to bite the bullet and replace everything with something entirely different. This was made more urgent by the fact that I am leaving the country for a month soon and do not want to be stuck with a dead server then.
My company were decomissioning some installations and among the hardware was a Dell Poweredge 1550 with only 9 months left on the warrenty and it was also rather low spec compared to what we buy thesedays. When I got the box the 18Gb SCSI drive was busted and Dell shipped me a replacement 36Gig drive for no cost. I had some spare RAM from a previous machine and I also have 2 CPU’s but I need a new heatsink first before I can use the 2nd.
The current configuration is:
- Dell Poweredge 1550 1U Server
- 2Gb Kingston Memory
- Maxtor 36Gb 10,000 RPM Ultra 3 SCSI drive
- IBM 18Gb 10,000 RPM Ultra 3 SCSI drive
- Single 1Ghz CPU
I had some problems with my previous partition layout so I took the oppertunity to fix these:
- Inreased the size of /var and got rid of some hacks I put in place previously to cope with a full /var
- Enabled softupdates on all but /, this machine was installed with FreeBSD 4.2 initially so Softupdates were not a standard option then.
- Added a /tmp partition to prevent /tmp usage from filling up / in the past
- Add much more swap space since from initial installation the machine has gone from 512Mb RAM to 2Gig RAM.
The 18Gb drive will be used for a backup medium so I will be making an effort to keep drive usage below 18Gb (I am only on 6Gig usage now!) in order to be able to keep my full drive backup strategy working until I get another 36Gb drive somewhere – or even another 18Gb drive.
Initial indications are that things have all gone well, the machine is blindingly fast compared to old machine (a dual PIII 500 with Ultra 2 SCSI) for example opening a 4000 message Maildir in mutt would take a good 20 to 30 seconds, it’s taking 4 seconds now!
