FA's new support site

[bridgeportcat]

192GB of RAM, doing nothing.

that is a crime scene

[Eaglebird]

I doubt FA would actually know what to do with any sort of clustering, or for that matter, use, of all that hardware. I have a feeling they'd use it all for the same thing they're using it for now: nothing.

[nrr]

192GB of RAM, doing nothing.

The really funny part is that, if they were running Linux, the 192GB worth of RAM would, by default, go toward an aggressive filesystem cache.  They're running FreeBSD, though, and they're demonstrably unable to manage it, so I highly doubt that they've configured their machines to this end.

we;lp

[Lazarian]

Seeing that FA is apparently being run on a behemoth pile of hardware, what do some of the other sites like Inkbunny and SoFurry manage with? Granted, they probably get something like twenty percent or so of traffic compared to FA, but seeing them compared with what each one has under the hood would be interesting. You guys mapped the network topography for FA, what does IB and SF look like?

[Pi]

You guys mapped the network topography for FA, what does IB and SF look like?

I suppose I could throw some nmap at those two sometime, but I'm not sure how fruitful it'd be. Most sane network admins hide the internals.

OTOH I could also throw up my own network diagram. I did throw down the 60 bucks for OmniGraffle for an actual reason.

[nrr]

Seeing that FA is apparently being run on a behemoth pile of hardware, what do some of the other sites like Inkbunny and SoFurry manage with?

e621 routinely pushed 20-30TB/mo from a virtual machine with 4GB RAM and ~200GB disk running on an eight-thread Xeon box.

[Glaice]

e621 routinely pushed 20-30TB/mo from a virtual machine with 4GB RAM and ~200GB disk running on an eight-thread Xeon box.

And I'm pretty sure it cost a fraction of what FA's hardware costed. Hell, with the disk space and a little extra RAM, I'm sure they could have run on it without having to spend $16,000 of donation money on it.

[nrr]

And I'm pretty sure it cost a fraction of what FA's hardware costed. Hell, with the disk space and a little extra RAM, I'm sure they could have run on it without having to spend $16,000 of donation money on it.

The physical hardware for e621 was something inordinately stupid cheap, and it definitely performed as such during the last month or so I was performing system administration tasks for Varka in exchange for booze.  "Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"

As a data point, I'm building out a pair of PowerEdge R415's with dual 6-core Opterons, 8GB RAM, and 3x250GB SATA disk in RAID 5 for about $5,500 all in.  If I add another 56GB worth of RAM to both of them and throw in a SAN (another, what, $15,000-20,000?), given the performance metrics I've seen for FA, I can host the damnable site three times over, in virtual machines, and still have plenty of capacity to spare.

Protip: Do not develop your infrastructure around your power; instead, develop your power around your infrastructure.  If you're constantly concerned about power usage in a datacenter, you're being too much of a tree-hugging hippie.  Business-critical systems draw current like a horse drinks water on a hot summer day.  That's just a fact of life.

[Jim Demintia]

"Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"

Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?

[nrr]

Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?

i wish.

[ProvincialTwit]

But this ASUS product is both ROCK SOLID -and- HEART TOUCHING!

[rodox_video]

COCK SOLID
DICK TOUCHING
(ANUSUS)

[Conan]

As a data point, I'm building out a pair of PowerEdge R415's with dual 6-core Opterons, 8GB RAM, and 3x250GB SATA disk in RAID 5 for about $5,500 all in.  If I add another 56GB worth of RAM to both of them and throw in a SAN (another, what, $15,000-20,000?), given the performance metrics I've seen for FA, I can host the damnable site three times over, in virtual machines, and still have plenty of capacity to spare

But but but... FA is a BIG site and BIG sites require a LOT of hardware!!!!! Two 1U servers is not big!!!!!

[Eaglebird]

"Sure, your cheap Taiwanese hardware won't ever fail!"

Can we just ban Taiwan from doing anything with computers, ever?

I for one welcome our Taiwanese motherboards.

[Lazarian]

So in other words, they need gargantuan hardware to run poorly planned configuration and unoptimized code with the illusion of efficiency? Like needing a P2 350 to pretend it is a 4mhz SNES?

But then I suppose there needs to be capacity for TF2 server too. Can't forget the important stuff, huh?

[Jim Demintia]

Like needing a P2 350 to pretend it is a 4mhz SNES?

Uh Z80 opcodes don't turn into x86 by magic you know.

[Pi]

some guy named mrtheplague sent me these:

Regarding iron artist:
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Been working on two 'em tonight
Regarding kb.furaffinity.net:
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague The software was a POS (I admit it - bad idea in retrospect). I got a refund for it, and got a new kb software. It's now help.furaffinity.net

Regarding Ferrox, the commissions page, and security:
<TheDragoneer> MrThePlague: Ferrox was abandoned quite some time ago. Coding is moving in a different direction - part of what we're aiming to beta/preview in May.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: did you like entirely give up on the commission page btw
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Honestly? Yes. It's being abandoned for an entirely new system. No date, no ETA.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: and what about the code?
<TheDragoneer>MrTheCode: What about it?
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: will anyone who has a single clue about security be having any kind of look at it, or will you just do the usual thing you do and throw up some unreviewed thing that "mostly works"
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Yak wants to get the code into a presentable state, then pull other people to review it as I recall. He just needs to resolve some things with it first. But that's a question for him
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer: oh, so the usual thing, alright
<dothack-Locke>'Neer, will there be an option to keep the old appearance?
<TheDragoneer>dothack-Locke: Possibly, but no new features will be added to it.
<MrThePlague>TheDragoneer what guarantees do we have that any of the new features being planned won't have the same holes as the old ones, and the
<MrThePlague>ones that yak also introduced
<TheDragoneer>MrThePlague: Sorry about that. Working on FAU's site right now. The plan is to beta test it live. Test first, fix first. We're not going live with it until it's ready.

Apparently there were also some questions asked that didn't get answered. Then Princess Piche took off, because he had to work on FA:U's site some more. (and those iron artist commissions.)

[Eaglebird]

aka sit around and do nothing.


I like how we went from "new site at FA:U" to "beta by FA:U" 

[Freehaven]

The plan is to beta test it live. Test first, fix first. We're not going live with it until it's ready.

I'm betting they'll do it with the actual mainsite instead of a dedicated testing server/domain or whatever. Any takers?

[Eevee]

Durp.  Beta testing does not find security holes.