Clan x86

Announcements => [x86] Announcements => Topic started by: iago on November 20, 2009, 08:39:22 am

Title: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: iago on November 20, 2009, 08:39:22 am
I'm running low on harddrive space on both my database server and Web server.

It's pretty trivial to fix, but it means I'm going to take them offline for maybe an hour, probably sometime this weekend.

Just a heads up. :)
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: iago on November 21, 2009, 10:02:57 am
Fixed and fixed. Took like 10 mins total.. way quicker than I figured. Sorry for any inconvenience. :)
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: Camel on November 23, 2009, 11:37:25 am
My harddrives tend to go bad before they get full. Consider yourself lucky!
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: iago on November 23, 2009, 01:18:55 pm
Well, it's virtual hardware. I just created new drives and mounted the appropriate data directories on the new drive. Simple. :)
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: Camel on November 23, 2009, 01:31:52 pm
It it xen, or an application-level VM? I was reading about xen the other day - cool stuff.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: deadly7 on November 23, 2009, 01:32:08 pm
My harddrives tend to go bad before they get full. Consider yourself lucky!
I have yet to have a harddrive fail on me that I didn't do something malicious to. Taking care of your parts really isn't that difficult.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: iago on November 23, 2009, 02:41:13 pm
It it xen, or an application-level VM? I was reading about xen the other day - cool stuff.
Full-system VM -- specifically, VMWare Server edition. I'd like to learn Xen, but we use VMWare at work so I'm used to it, and I've gotten accustomed to VMWare Server's stupid little quirks.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: MyndFyre on November 23, 2009, 02:47:19 pm
My harddrives tend to go bad before they get full. Consider yourself lucky!
I have yet to have a harddrive fail on me that I didn't do something malicious to. Taking care of your parts really isn't that difficult.
TWSS
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: Camel on November 23, 2009, 03:11:15 pm
I have yet to have a harddrive fail on me that I didn't do something malicious to. Taking care of your parts really isn't that difficult.
Harddrives have moving parts, and the ferrous material doesn't last forever. I've yet to have a harddrive fail before I moved its data to a fresh drive, but I've had many (at least 5) harddrives that I've owned long enough for them to die of normal wear. These days, I generally only buy WD Black drives, which come with a 5 year warranty, so I imagine those ones will last much longer.

I'd like to learn Xen, but we use VMWare at work so I'm used to it, and I've gotten accustomed to VMWare Server's stupid little quirks.
I'm using Virtual Box at home because it was free (read: easier to download) and does what I need. If I had the time to screw around with it, and another machine to play around with, I would love to learn Xen. Right now, my 3 machines all have their own purpose - my Linux box has to have 98% uptime, or I'll lose money, so that one's out. My main machine is for gaming, which I'm not willing to sacrifice. I could do it on my Mac, but the harddrive is so slow that backing up takes forever, so I just don't feel like doing it. :D
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: iago on November 23, 2009, 03:14:22 pm
I'd like to learn Xen, but we use VMWare at work so I'm used to it, and I've gotten accustomed to VMWare Server's stupid little quirks.
I'm using Virtual Box at home because it was free (read: easier to download) and does what I need. If I had the time to screw around with it, and another machine to play around with, I would love to learn Xen. Right now, my 3 machines all have their own purpose - my Linux box has to have 98% uptime, or I'll lose money, so that one's out. My main machine is for gaming, which I'm not willing to sacrifice. I could do it on my Mac, but the harddrive is so slow that backing up takes forever, so I just don't feel like doing it. :D
VMWare server is free free, which is nice. :)
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: Camel on November 23, 2009, 03:18:12 pm
Oh, neat. I'll have to check that out the next time I need to download one of those.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: deadly7 on November 23, 2009, 03:40:54 pm
Harddrives have moving parts, and the ferrous material doesn't last forever. I've yet to have a harddrive fail before I moved its data to a fresh drive, but I've had many (at least 5) harddrives that I've owned long enough for them to die of normal wear. These days, I generally only buy WD Black drives, which come with a 5 year warranty, so I imagine those ones will last much longer.
I have owned numerous drives in my years. Even leaving computesr up 24/7 running computations/rendering/downloading/etc, my desktop (almost hitting the 10 year mark now) has yet to have a single HD fail. Keep them well cooled, keep them properly defraged (when on Windows), and physically clean them and they'll last. Maybe new hard drives they make now just suck, though. Companies have definitely started skimping and fail at having good quality.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: MyndFyre on November 23, 2009, 05:55:06 pm
I don't know what people's obsession with defragging is - Windows will do it automatically.  I haven't defragged a hard drive since WinXP.

NTFS is a pretty low-maintenance file system.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: deadly7 on November 23, 2009, 06:54:14 pm
I don't know what people's obsession with defragging is - Windows will do it automatically.  I haven't defragged a hard drive since WinXP.

NTFS is a pretty low-maintenance file system.
Windows might have tasks scheduled that do it automatically, but you still have to run the actual process of reorganizing the files on the drive.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: rabbit on November 23, 2009, 07:22:43 pm
Backup what you need and reformat every 8 months.  It's worked for me.
Title: Re: Server maintenance is coming!
Post by: Camel on November 24, 2009, 02:23:43 am
Simply having the computer on does not wear the drive at all, since the drive will just shut itself off when it's not in use. When I buy a new hard drive (or other hardware), the old one it replaces usually goes in to my dedicated server box, where it is hammered on constantly until it dies. I'm not sure why so many people are jumping at me as if to say I'm not taking care of my disks, since the shortest period of time I've killed a drive in was over 6 years, which is more than 3 times longer than the warranty lasted.