The new server is in place, and running happily.  We’ve already seen download activity in excess of what the old server could do, so that’s good.  We’ve also fixed one or two broken mirrors, while we were at it.

If you notice anything that isn’t working properly, please let board@muug.ca know!

-Adam

From: Adam Thompson
Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 11:35 AM
To: muug-announce@muug.ca
Subject: MUUG server maintenance - starting Friday 2022-Jan-07, around 19:00

Hello, all.

We’ve been working on the new server for MUUG for quite some time, and we’re ready to (try to) switch over this Friday, Jan 7^th around 19:00 (7pm).  Since this is a bit of a shoestring operation, we expect this to go well, but not necessarily perfectly.

The server currently provides these main public services, and the new server should just continue these (more or less) uninterrupted:

• HTTP & HTTP/S access to the MUUG website and the mirror content
• FTP access to the MUUG FTP site and the mirror content
• Rsync access to the mirror content
• SMTP access for individual @muug.ca emails as well as mailman-managed mailing lists
• NTP server in the global, north American, and Canadian pools

One area of concern is sendmail/mailman, i.e. the mailing lists.  So if your emails to roundtable@muug.ca (et al.) aren’t working, there’s probably a good reason for that!

The other area that might cause problems for some users, is the content mirroring – some upstream sources apply ACLs such that only the production MUUG server can rsync from them.  We’ve done our best to mitigate that, but it’s possible that it could take a day or so to fully catch up.

So if you notice anything wrong on Friday or Saturday… meh.  Let us know, in case we aren’t already aware?  But there’s a fairly good chance we already know and are already trying to fix it.

However, if you notice anything wrong next week – definitely, please tell us!  That most likely means we’ve missed something.  If emails to board@muug.ca don’t seem to work, email me directly at athompso@athompso.net.

Huge thanks go to Sean Cody and Ken Zorniak from Tangent Animation for allowing MUUG to acquire newer, known-good hardware, at a price more appropriate to a group that only charges a $20/yr membership fee!

Some of you will be wondering what the difference is, so here’s the major differences:

Item	Old server	New server
Age	6 years old	approx. 3 years old
Size	1U *rackspace donated by Les.net*	3U *rackspace donated by Les.net*
Power	1x PSU *power donated by Les.net*	2x PSU, also roughly 2x the current draw *power donated by Les.net*
HDDs	12 x 5400rpm SATA	24 x 7200rpm SAS
SSDs	3 (2xSATA, 1xNVMe)	5 (4xSATA, 1xNVMe) Can add at least 5 more NVMe
CPUs	1 x Xeon E3-1230v3 (3.3GHz) 8 cores	2x Xeon E5-2620v4 (2.1GHz) 32 cores
RAM	32G installed, 32G max	64G installed, 2TB max
NICs	2x1G (usable) + 2x10G (unusable) *1G connection donated by Les.net*	4x1G (usable) + 2x10G (finally usable!) *10G connection donated by Les.net*
PCIe slots	1 low-profile	7 full-size
Speed	Can push ~800Mbps, with a tail wind	Easily reached 4Gbps in testing

That’s all for now,

-Adam