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Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

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  Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center echo test <echotest09@gmail.com> - 2020-06-26 20:40 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-26 21:50 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center Nicholas Geovanis <nickgeovanis@gmail.com> - 2020-06-26 22:10 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-28 22:50 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-06-29 08:10 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-30 00:00 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-29 15:20 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-29 23:50 +0200
            Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-30 01:30 +0200
              Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-30 20:10 +0200
                Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-30 21:00 +0200
                  Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center elvis <elvis@dogonfire.com> - 2020-07-01 12:50 +0200
                    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-07-01 13:10 +0200
                      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-07-01 14:20 +0200
                        RAID stuff [was Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a  dedicated data center] Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-07-01 14:30 +0200
                        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-07-01 14:50 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-29 15:00 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 17:00 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-29 17:10 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 17:40 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-29 17:30 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-29 18:00 +0200
            Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 18:20 +0200
              Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-29 18:30 +0200
                Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 22:50 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 18:00 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-06-26 22:00 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-26 22:10 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-26 22:50 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-26 23:00 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz> - 2020-06-29 15:30 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-29 15:50 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 17:30 +0200
            Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Reco <recoverym4n@enotuniq.net> - 2020-06-29 17:40 +0200
              Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center MAS Jean-Louis <jean-louis.mas@imag.fr> - 2020-06-29 18:40 +0200
                Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 19:10 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center ghe2001 <ghe2001@protonmail.com> - 2020-06-26 22:20 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-06-27 09:40 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-27 22:10 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-06-28 01:10 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Fred <fred@blakemfg.com> - 2020-06-28 02:10 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center Kenneth Parker <sea7kenp@gmail.com> - 2020-06-28 06:00 +0200
            Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-28 06:10 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-27 11:10 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-27 11:20 +0200
    Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-28 09:20 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2020-06-28 09:50 +0200
      Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center echo test <echotest09@gmail.com> - 2020-06-28 12:40 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-28 21:00 +0200
          Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center echo test <echotest09@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 19:50 +0200
            Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-30 00:30 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 09:10 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> - 2020-06-28 20:30 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-29 04:20 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-29 04:30 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 09:10 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Alessandro Baggi <alessandro.baggi@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 09:30 +0200
          Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-06-29 21:00 +0200
        Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-29 09:40 +0200
      Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data  center David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2020-06-29 22:10 +0200

Page 3 of 3 — ← Prev page 1 2 [3]

#224130 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 6/27/20 1:04 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> I've had good luck with Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more of them 
> and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster. 
> https://www.rackmountsetc.com/ has been pretty good to me when it comes 
> to configuring & assembling Supermicro components (and suggesting 
> specific configurations).  You might also look into Ganeti as a cluster 
> management package (open source, originated at google for internal 
> use).  Same horsepower & quality as a Dell or HP server, at a 
> considerably lower price.
> 
> I've been running Debian this way, in a data center, for at least a 
> decade. (Note:  I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian for our 
> next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the way to BSD 
> or an OpenSolaris distro.)
> 
> One other alternative:   A lot of people seem to swear by Mac Minis as 
> servers.  They're already BSD under the hood, and I've run all kinds of 
> Linux distros on Macs, under virtualization.  You should be able to run 
> Debian directly, though I've never tried it.
> 
> Miles Fidelman
> 
> 
> On 6/26/2020 1:34 PM, echo test wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws 
>>> or gcp.
>>>
>>> Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting 
>>> a web app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy 
>>> some hardware for this. I tried looking for it on the web in order to 
>>> compare them but it seems that hardware vendors never want to talk 
>>> about Debian on their websites.
>>>
>>> Seriously, I prefer using my money for donating to the Debian 
>>> foundation than having to pay for Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise 
>>> because I love Debian and ...
>>>
>>> So, I want to know if It's a good idea to try using Debian in an 
>>> enterprise context, with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo 
>>> ThinkCenter which seems to never mention that they support Debian. 
>>> What kind of issues can I encounter with such hardwares except simple 
>>> cases like having to install missing drivers with some already 
>>> available firmwares.
>>>
>>> Can you give me some alternative hardwares in case this idea may take 
>>> me to much time to solve ?
>>>
>>> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
>>>
>>> Sorry if my English is bad, it's not my mother language
>>>
>>> Thank you.
> 
To Miles Fidelman:
Devuan Linux is Debian with all traces of systemd removed.
Best regards,
Fred

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#224132

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On Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 8:08 PM Fred <fred@blakemfg.com> wrote:

> On 6/27/20 1:04 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> > I've had good luck with Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more of them
> > and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster.
> > https://www.rackmountsetc.com/ has been pretty good to me when it comes
> > to configuring & assembling Supermicro components (and suggesting
> > specific configurations).  You might also look into Ganeti as a cluster
> > management package (open source, originated at google for internal
> > use).  Same horsepower & quality as a Dell or HP server, at a
> > considerably lower price.
> >
> > I've been running Debian this way, in a data center, for at least a
> > decade. (Note:  I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian for our
> > next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the way to BSD
> > or an OpenSolaris distro.)
> >
> > One other alternative:   A lot of people seem to swear by Mac Minis as
> > servers.  They're already BSD under the hood, and I've run all kinds of
> > Linux distros on Macs, under virtualization.  You should be able to run
> > Debian directly, though I've never tried it.
> >
> > Miles Fidelman
> >
> >
> > On 6/26/2020 1:34 PM, echo test wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws
> >>> or gcp.
> >>>
> >>> Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting
> >>> a web app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy
> >>> some hardware for this. I tried looking for it on the web in order to
> >>> compare them but it seems that hardware vendors never want to talk
> >>> about Debian on their websites.
> >>>
> >>> Seriously, I prefer using my money for donating to the Debian
> >>> foundation than having to pay for Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise
> >>> because I love Debian and ...
> >>>
> >>> So, I want to know if It's a good idea to try using Debian in an
> >>> enterprise context, with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo
> >>> ThinkCenter which seems to never mention that they support Debian.
> >>> What kind of issues can I encounter with such hardwares except simple
> >>> cases like having to install missing drivers with some already
> >>> available firmwares.
> >>>
> >>> Can you give me some alternative hardwares in case this idea may take
> >>> me to much time to solve ?
> >>>
> >>> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
> >>>
> >>> Sorry if my English is bad, it's not my mother language
> >>>
> >>> Thank you.
> >
> To Miles Fidelman:
> Devuan Linux is Debian with all traces of systemd removed.
>

+1

I run, both Devuan and Debian, on my multiple systems in my Apartment, with
the idea of being conversant on both Technologies.

Best regards,
> Fred
>

Kenneth Parker

>

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#224133 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

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<see end>

On 6/27/20 11:56 PM, Kenneth Parker wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 27, 2020, 8:08 PM Fred <fred@blakemfg.com 
> <mailto:fred@blakemfg.com>> wrote:
>
>     On 6/27/20 1:04 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>     > I've had good luck with Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more
>     of them
>     > and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster.
>     > https://www.rackmountsetc.com/ has been pretty good to me when
>     it comes
>     > to configuring & assembling Supermicro components (and suggesting
>     > specific configurations).  You might also look into Ganeti as a
>     cluster
>     > management package (open source, originated at google for internal
>     > use).  Same horsepower & quality as a Dell or HP server, at a
>     > considerably lower price.
>     >
>     > I've been running Debian this way, in a data center, for at least a
>     > decade. (Note:  I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian
>     for our
>     > next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the
>     way to BSD
>     > or an OpenSolaris distro.)
>     >
>     > One other alternative:   A lot of people seem to swear by Mac
>     Minis as
>     > servers.  They're already BSD under the hood, and I've run all
>     kinds of
>     > Linux distros on Macs, under virtualization.  You should be able
>     to run
>     > Debian directly, though I've never tried it.
>     >
>     > Miles Fidelman
>     >
>     >
>     > On 6/26/2020 1:34 PM, echo test wrote:
>     >>> Hello,
>     >>>
>     >>> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to
>     use aws
>     >>> or gcp.
>     >>>
>     >>> Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for
>     hosting
>     >>> a web app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy
>     >>> some hardware for this. I tried looking for it on the web in
>     order to
>     >>> compare them but it seems that hardware vendors never want to
>     talk
>     >>> about Debian on their websites.
>     >>>
>     >>> Seriously, I prefer using my money for donating to the Debian
>     >>> foundation than having to pay for Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise
>     >>> because I love Debian and ...
>     >>>
>     >>> So, I want to know if It's a good idea to try using Debian in an
>     >>> enterprise context, with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or
>     Lenovo
>     >>> ThinkCenter which seems to never mention that they support
>     Debian.
>     >>> What kind of issues can I encounter with such hardwares except
>     simple
>     >>> cases like having to install missing drivers with some already
>     >>> available firmwares.
>     >>>
>     >>> Can you give me some alternative hardwares in case this idea
>     may take
>     >>> me to much time to solve ?
>     >>>
>     >>> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
>     >>>
>     >>> Sorry if my English is bad, it's not my mother language
>     >>>
>     >>> Thank you.
>     >
>     To Miles Fidelman:
>     Devuan Linux is Debian with all traces of systemd removed.
>
>
> +1
>
> I run, both Devuan and Debian, on my multiple systems in my Apartment, 
> with the idea of being conversant on both Technologies.
>
>     Best regards,
>     Fred
>
>
> Kenneth Parker

Yes... but what ARE those systems, and how do they apply to the original 
poster's question?

Miles



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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#224096 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

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On Vi, 26 iun 20, 20:34:07, echo test wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws or gcp.
> 
> Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting a web
> app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy some hardware
> for this. I tried looking for it on the web in order to compare them but it
> seems that hardware vendors never want to talk about Debian on their
> websites.

"small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers 
could get you more useful recommendations.

In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't 
forget about the power consumption).

https://www.debian.org/News/2020/20200616
https://www.pine64.org/2020/06/05/rockpro64-cluster-move-june-5-10/

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#224098 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

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On Sb, 27 iun 20, 12:00:58, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Vi, 26 iun 20, 20:34:07, echo test wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws or gcp.
> > 
> > Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting a web
> > app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy some hardware
> > for this. I tried looking for it on the web in order to compare them but it
> > seems that hardware vendors never want to talk about Debian on their
> > websites.
> 
> "small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers 
> could get you more useful recommendations.
> 
> In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't 
> forget about the power consumption).
> 
> https://www.debian.org/News/2020/20200616
> https://www.pine64.org/2020/06/05/rockpro64-cluster-move-june-5-10/

Forgot to mention these
http://macchiatobin.net/product/macchiatobin-single-shot/
http://macchiatobin.net/product/macchiatobin-double-shot/

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#224137 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 2020-06-26 11:34, echo test wrote:
> Hello,

Hello. :-)


> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws or gcp.

Even if you do not use their services, you might find it useful to 
emulate them and implement a private cloud.


> Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting a web
> app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy some hardware
> for this. 

Please specify the architecture of your services, your current 
development/ test/ staging/ production infrastructure and facilities, 
your current workload for each service, your current quality of service 
for each service, and all other relevant details.


Please describe your goals for the new data center in terms of the above.


Please specify your budget and schedule.


> I tried looking for it on the web in order to compare them but it
> seems that hardware vendors never want to talk about Debian on their
> websites.

I suspect they see no financial benefit in doing so.


> Seriously, I prefer using my money for donating to the Debian foundation
> than having to pay for Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise because I love Debian
> and ...

Business owners are usually interested in spending their money on things 
that provide a positive "return on investment".


> So, I want to know if It's a good idea to try using Debian in an enterprise
> context, 

Please define "enterprise context".  (I would define it as thousands of 
employees and even more web hits and e-mail messages per day)


I view Debian as the dominant enthusiast Linux distribution in the USA. 
I use it on my SOHO laptops and desktops because it mostly works on most 
x86/x86_64 computers made in the last ~20 years.  (But, it is common for 
the "stable" version not to work on recently designed hardware.)  I also 
have a Ubiquitti Networks Unifi Controller application stack running on 
a Debian VPS on the Internet ($5/month).  I am the only user and it has 
never failed.  Other people with far more knowledge, skills, and 
ambition do more with Debian, but the effort appears to be both heroic 
and lonely.  I have yet to hear of an "enterprise" environment built on 
Debian, but you can tell us about yours when you build it. (URL's for 
examples of such are welcome.)


I view FreeBSD as the dominant free x86/x86_64 BSD/Unix server 
distribution.  I use it on my SOHO servers because the design is 
traditional, the feel is polished, software packages are recent, and 
there are good books available [1, 2].  FreeBSD has notable enterprise 
deployments and commercial derivatives [3].


I view Ubuntu as the dominant commercial Debian derivative company, Red 
Hat as the dominant USA commercial Linux company, SUSE as the dominant 
German commercial Linux company, and Oracle as the dominant commercial 
Unix company.  If I ran an enterprise data center on Unix or Unix-like 
computers, I would find the following characteristics of these 
commercial offerings to be very appealing:

1.  Configuration management, quality assurance, and documentation.

2.  Hardware and software certification/ integration (notably Oracle).

3.  Technical support and consulting.

4.  Personnel training and certification.


> with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo ThinkCenter which
> seems to never mention that they support Debian. What kind of issues can I
> encounter with such hardwares except simple cases like having to install
> missing drivers with some already available firmwares.

If you use a commercial OS, certified hardware, and certified software, 
you should never experience compatibility issues.  If you do find an 
issue, you make the vendor fix it (or fire them and hire another vendor).


> Can you give me some alternative hardwares in case this idea may take me to
> much time to solve ?

I have a Dell PowerEdge T30 and do not recall any issues with Debian 9. 
(But the fact that Dell disabled the M.2 NVMe port in the firmware does 
irritate me.)


I have had good luck with Antec cases; Thermaltake power supplies, Intel 
motherboards, network interfaces, and solid-state drives; and Seagate 
hard disk drives.


> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.

"Enterprise" implies storage area networks.  This requires hardware (and 
support software).


Drives and/or racks with dual interfaces require hardware (and support 
software).


Hardware RAID (and support software) should give you the best I/O 
performance and least CPU load, but implies locking you into the 
vendor's way of doing things.


Software RAID gives you the most control and flexibility, but impacts 
I/O performance and CPU load.


> Sorry if my English is bad, it's not my mother language.

Your English is fine.


> Thank you.

You're welcome.  :-)


There have been 16 responses to your post in the past 36+ hours.  You 
should reply to at least some of them.


David



[1] 
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/product/Mc-Kusick-Design-and-Implementation-of-the-Free-BSD-Operating-System-The-2nd-Edition/9780133761832.html

[2] https://mwl.io/nonfiction

[3] 
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/nutshell.html#introduction-nutshell-users

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#224139

David Christensen wrote:

> There have been 16 responses to your post in the past 36+ hours.  You
> should reply to at least some of them.
> 
> 
> David

Excellent reading (at least for me) even if OP does not reply, it  is not
wasted.

regards

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#224140

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Hello,

Thank you for all your answers and sorry to be late for answering.

> I prefer ZFS but I find that lots of corps prefer mdadm. I really think
that's simply > because ZFS came from Sun and they lack Solaris
backgrounds. Now, in a low-> RAM environment with simpler disc needs, I
would probably go with mdadm.
> Anything else I would choose ZFS. It's ability to take care of itself is
surprisingly > strong. Less work for me after the set up and installation.

ZFS beeing a filesystem and mdadm an utility software, I think I'll go for
mdadm. I didn't know that Debian was supporting ZFS I always used Ext4.


> Well, this might be heresy, but at that size, consider a Raspberry Pi
running Raspian
> I use a 3+ because I want to give the 4 a couple years to get its
hardware and software debugged.

I already have some raspberry pi running at home and even if I found they
can do very many things, they don't match what I want now.  I'm currently
using the 4b model with 1Gb of RAM which seemed to have enough power for
doing much more things but it's not yet able to boot from an external hard
drive, but I tried hacking this with fstab and it worked sometimes and not
on the next boot, so I just stopped trying to figure out what happened. I
dislike the idea that if I encrypt my hard drive anybody with enough
knowledge can just take the SD card and break my encryption.


>   I think Debian is a very good choice for a small enterprise server.
> ...
> I have been burned more than once with hardware RAID solutions.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, are you saying that Debian  cannot scale in
a bigger enterprise ?
Can you tell me what happened with hardware RAID solutions?

> small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers
> could get you more useful recommendations.
> In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't
> forget about the power consumption).

Small here is for me about 2000 users all are restaurants that save their
selling history locally on their own server then 2 or 3 times in the
morning they will rsync their postgres data on my data center.
About the power consumption, any advice about some low power hardware are
also welcome.


> Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more of them
> and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster
>  ...
> Note:  I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian for our
> next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the way to BSD
>or an OpenSolaris distro.

Supermicro seems definitely to propose some great stuff I will take them in
account. Why do you dislike systemd ? I heard many people saying the same
thing and I don't really understand what are their motivation except initd
is less invasive.


>> First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws or
gcp.
> Even if you do not use their services, you might find it useful to
> emulate them and implement a private cloud.

Very interesting, can you tell me more about that emulation process please ?

> Please specify the architecture of your services, your current
> development/ test/ staging/ production infrastructure and facilities,
> your current workload for each service, your current quality of service
> for each service, and all other relevant details.
> Please describe your goals for the new data center in terms of the above.

I don't really know how to answer to your question but let's try.  We are a
startup and for the moment we have a production and a development, in fact
the production is just like a test environment because we do continuous
delivery, we push everyday in order to know more quickly  when something
has been broken and our semi-automated tests didn't detect it. Personally,
I'm a self learner, and probably many guys of my team are too. So some
advices here are also welcome.
We want to be able to handle 2500+ rsync in the morning (probably
distributing them in time in order to avoid a single big load acting as a
ddos) and for each client of my clients (restaurants) a get and put profile
request.
Note: client's profile are shared across restaurants and clients can
find/filter restaurants on the website which is not yet built but we are
working on it.


> There have been 16 responses to your post in the past 36+ hours.  You
> should reply to at least some of them.

Sorry, I agree this is a bad practice, I just realized that it's even more
annoying at the moment to write the answer.

Thank you again.



Le dim. 28 juin 2020 à 09:16, David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com>
a écrit :

> On 2020-06-26 11:34, echo test wrote:
> > Hello,
>
> Hello. :-)
>
>
> > First of all, please don't ask me why I simply don't want to use aws or
> gcp.
>
> Even if you do not use their services, you might find it useful to
> emulate them and implement a private cloud.
>
>
> > Then, I want to build a small data center for my company for hosting a
> web
> > app and a mail server. It's the first time I'm going to buy some hardware
> > for this.
>
> Please specify the architecture of your services, your current
> development/ test/ staging/ production infrastructure and facilities,
> your current workload for each service, your current quality of service
> for each service, and all other relevant details.
>
>
> Please describe your goals for the new data center in terms of the above.
>
>
> Please specify your budget and schedule.
>
>
> > I tried looking for it on the web in order to compare them but it
> > seems that hardware vendors never want to talk about Debian on their
> > websites.
>
> I suspect they see no financial benefit in doing so.
>
>
> > Seriously, I prefer using my money for donating to the Debian foundation
> > than having to pay for Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise because I love Debian
> > and ...
>
> Business owners are usually interested in spending their money on things
> that provide a positive "return on investment".
>
>
> > So, I want to know if It's a good idea to try using Debian in an
> enterprise
> > context,
>
> Please define "enterprise context".  (I would define it as thousands of
> employees and even more web hits and e-mail messages per day)
>
>
> I view Debian as the dominant enthusiast Linux distribution in the USA.
> I use it on my SOHO laptops and desktops because it mostly works on most
> x86/x86_64 computers made in the last ~20 years.  (But, it is common for
> the "stable" version not to work on recently designed hardware.)  I also
> have a Ubiquitti Networks Unifi Controller application stack running on
> a Debian VPS on the Internet ($5/month).  I am the only user and it has
> never failed.  Other people with far more knowledge, skills, and
> ambition do more with Debian, but the effort appears to be both heroic
> and lonely.  I have yet to hear of an "enterprise" environment built on
> Debian, but you can tell us about yours when you build it. (URL's for
> examples of such are welcome.)
>
>
> I view FreeBSD as the dominant free x86/x86_64 BSD/Unix server
> distribution.  I use it on my SOHO servers because the design is
> traditional, the feel is polished, software packages are recent, and
> there are good books available [1, 2].  FreeBSD has notable enterprise
> deployments and commercial derivatives [3].
>
>
> I view Ubuntu as the dominant commercial Debian derivative company, Red
> Hat as the dominant USA commercial Linux company, SUSE as the dominant
> German commercial Linux company, and Oracle as the dominant commercial
> Unix company.  If I ran an enterprise data center on Unix or Unix-like
> computers, I would find the following characteristics of these
> commercial offerings to be very appealing:
>
> 1.  Configuration management, quality assurance, and documentation.
>
> 2.  Hardware and software certification/ integration (notably Oracle).
>
> 3.  Technical support and consulting.
>
> 4.  Personnel training and certification.
>
>
> > with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo ThinkCenter which
> > seems to never mention that they support Debian. What kind of issues can
> I
> > encounter with such hardwares except simple cases like having to install
> > missing drivers with some already available firmwares.
>
> If you use a commercial OS, certified hardware, and certified software,
> you should never experience compatibility issues.  If you do find an
> issue, you make the vendor fix it (or fire them and hire another vendor).
>
>
> > Can you give me some alternative hardwares in case this idea may take me
> to
> > much time to solve ?
>
> I have a Dell PowerEdge T30 and do not recall any issues with Debian 9.
> (But the fact that Dell disabled the M.2 NVMe port in the firmware does
> irritate me.)
>
>
> I have had good luck with Antec cases; Thermaltake power supplies, Intel
> motherboards, network interfaces, and solid-state drives; and Seagate
> hard disk drives.
>
>
> > Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
>
> "Enterprise" implies storage area networks.  This requires hardware (and
> support software).
>
>
> Drives and/or racks with dual interfaces require hardware (and support
> software).
>
>
> Hardware RAID (and support software) should give you the best I/O
> performance and least CPU load, but implies locking you into the
> vendor's way of doing things.
>
>
> Software RAID gives you the most control and flexibility, but impacts
> I/O performance and CPU load.
>
>
> > Sorry if my English is bad, it's not my mother language.
>
> Your English is fine.
>
>
> > Thank you.
>
> You're welcome.  :-)
>
>
> There have been 16 responses to your post in the past 36+ hours.  You
> should reply to at least some of them.
>
>
> David
>
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/product/Mc-Kusick-Design-and-Implementation-of-the-Free-BSD-Operating-System-The-2nd-Edition/9780133761832.html
>
> [2] https://mwl.io/nonfiction
>
> [3]
>
> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/nutshell.html#introduction-nutshell-users
>
>

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#224155 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

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On 6/28/20 6:37 AM, echo test wrote:

>
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for all your answers and sorry to be late for answering.
> > I prefer ZFS but I find that lots of corps prefer mdadm. I really think that's simply > 
> because ZFS came from Sun and they lack Solaris backgrounds. Now, in a 
> low-> RAM environment with simpler disc needs, I would probably go 
> with mdadm.
> > Anything else I would choose ZFS. It's ability to take care of itself is surprisingly 
> > strong. Less work for me after the set up and installation.
>
> ZFS beeing a filesystem and mdadm an utility software, I think I'll go 
> for mdadm. I didn't know that Debian was supporting ZFS I always used 
> Ext4.
>
It's a stack.  You build up from disk, to block-level raid, to volume 
manager, to file system, to access protocol.

ZFS includes multiple levels of the stack.  And yes there are ZFS 
implementations for Debian, along with a dozen or more other file systems.

>
> Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, are you saying that Debian  cannot 
> scale in a bigger enterprise ?
> Can you tell me what happened with hardware RAID solutions?
>
> > small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers
> > could get you more useful recommendations.
> > In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't
> > forget about the power consumption).
>
> Small here is for me about 2000 users all are restaurants that save 
> their selling history locally on their own server then 2 or 3 times in 
> the morning they will rsync their postgres data on my data center.
> About the power consumption, any advice about some low power hardware 
> are also welcome.

Something seems a little flakey about that architecture.  Rsyncng 
postgress data?  There are lots of better ways to merge data into a 
database.  Particularly in these days of cheap, continuous, broadband 
connectivity.  And if you can't get business broadband in all your 
locations, cellular modems are dirt cheap.  (I speak as someone who's 
designed more than a few mobile data collection systems - everything 
from tactical military systems to transit buses).

>
>
>
> > Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more of them
> > and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster
> > ...
> > Note: I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian for our
> > next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the way to BSD
> >or an OpenSolaris distro.
>
> Supermicro seems definitely to propose some great stuff I will take 
> them in account. Why do you dislike systemd ? I heard many people 
> saying the same thing and I don't really understand what are their 
> motivation except initd is less invasive.

It's a spaghetti coded package of crap, that takes over your system and 
does things its way.  I prefer modularity, and control over my systems.

>
> I don't really know how to answer to your question but let's try.  We 
> are a startup and for the moment we have a production and a 
> development, in fact the production is just like a test environment 
> because we do continuous delivery, we push everyday in order to know 
> more quickly  when something has been broken and our semi-automated 
> tests didn't detect it. Personally, I'm a self learner, and probably 
> many guys of my team are too. So some advices here are also welcome.
> We want to be able to handle 2500+ rsync in the morning (probably 
> distributing them in time in order to avoid a single big load acting 
> as a ddos) and for each client of my clients (restaurants) a get and 
> put profile request.
> Note: client's profile are shared across restaurants and clients can 
> find/filter restaurants on the website which is not yet built but we 
> are working on it.

Rsync is just wrong for that kind of application.  What are you syncing, 
anyway.  2500 postgress instances, some raw data files for input to a 
single instance of postgress, something else?  And if the postgress 
instance is feeding live data to apps, you really need to focus first on 
your high-availability strategy - single points of failure will kill you.

Come to think of it, you're a poster child for doing everything in the 
cloud.  As a startup, you've got way too many other things to worry 
about than home brewing an IT environment - focus on your core 
product/service, whatever that is.  (Now, if you're setting up a service 
bureau, that's another story - in which case, hire some folks who 
actually know how to do this stuff.  Here, I'm speaking as someone who 
HAS homebrewed a small service bureau, with serious experience in 
computing & IT - back before any of this stuff was available off the 
shelf.  It's a royal PITA.  These days, I'm far more likely to set up a 
new domain, or app, on a hosting service, than on our cluster - unless & 
until I know that it needs to be around for a while.  Life's too short.)

Miles Fidelman

>
-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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#224208

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

I'm very happy to have asked this question here, my brain is enjoying.
Thank you again for all, I'll definitely be stick on Debian.

> Something seems a little flakey about that architecture.  Rsyncng
postgress data?  There are lots of better ways to merge data into a
database.  Particularly in these days of cheap, continuous, broadband
connectivity.  And if you can't get business broadband in all your
locations, cellular modems are dirt cheap.  (I speak as someone who's
designed more than a few mobile data collection systems - everything from
tactical military systems to transit buses)

Exactly, what a bad idea. Here I should be talking about sync not rsync (
autocorrect killed me). I was thinking about WAL archiving for a point in
time recovery.

> Rsync is just wrong for that kind of application.  What are you syncing,
anyway.  2500 postgress instances, some raw data files for input to a
single instance of postgress, something else?  And if the postgress
instance is feeding live data to apps, you really need to focus first on
your high-availability strategy - single points of failure will kill you.

Not for database but for raw files like images, video and audio, I planned
using rsync ( I've not yet tested if git could do the trick here but I
thought about it)

> As a startup, you've got way too many other things to worry about than
home brewing an IT environment - focus on your core product/service,
whatever that is

Exactly, but when I've seen that the product we are going to build will
cover all those aspects a.k.a building this means our product is ready and
we gained more experience on the subject.
 > I added indexes for the relevant fields, and the query took a few
minutes. Powerful hardware is nice, but using it efficiently is even better

Infinitely right, I don't repeating this to my team.

> ZFS requires a different way of thinking,
> ...
>  So, you can replicate over a network in real-time and you can send a
replication
stream to a file and receive it later.

At what level do we have to change our mind? For example will this impact
the way to think SELinux (normally no) ?

> you have good backup and restore processes for your current systems?
What are your plans for the new systems?
> ...
> Do you desire 24x7 operations, live maintenance, automatic fail-over,
high-availability, or similar?  If so, how?
> ...
> What is your budget and schedule?  Manpower?

About the budget an manpower, we are creating a financial plan in order to
present it to our investors, so nothing is well decided for the moment,
that is why all your answers and suggestions are welcome and very useful.
What is ideal for 24/7 operations,high-availability and auto fail-over ?
We're 8 in the team for the moment, 2 web and mobile developer and only 2
peoples know things about system and network (admin,security,..) but we
plan to get more peoples.
So please, suggest, in the worst case we will have learned more things.

+2 for docker and kubernetes


> We also had some HPE Proliant DL380, that's pure crap (a lot a disk died
in the same month, bios update are non free, watermarked hard disks).
For now, they are all out of order, and it's far too expensive to repair
them.

Thank very much for this warning. Something more to remove from the list of
things to evaluate. And somewhere in my mind I was suspecting things like
this :) .


Le dim. 28 juin 2020 à 20:51, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman@meetinghouse.net> a
écrit :

> On 6/28/20 6:37 AM, echo test wrote:
>
>
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for all your answers and sorry to be late for answering.
>
> > I prefer ZFS but I find that lots of corps prefer mdadm. I really think
> that's simply > because ZFS came from Sun and they lack Solaris
> backgrounds. Now, in a low-> RAM environment with simpler disc needs, I
> would probably go with mdadm.
> > Anything else I would choose ZFS. It's ability to take care of itself is
> surprisingly > strong. Less work for me after the set up and installation.
>
> ZFS beeing a filesystem and mdadm an utility software, I think I'll go for
> mdadm. I didn't know that Debian was supporting ZFS I always used Ext4.
>
> It's a stack.  You build up from disk, to block-level raid, to volume
> manager, to file system, to access protocol.
>
> ZFS includes multiple levels of the stack.  And yes there are ZFS
> implementations for Debian, along with a dozen or more other file systems.
>
>
> Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, are you saying that Debian  cannot scale in
> a bigger enterprise ?
> Can you tell me what happened with hardware RAID solutions?
>
> > small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers
> > could get you more useful recommendations.
> > In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't
> > forget about the power consumption).
>
> Small here is for me about 2000 users all are restaurants that save their
> selling history locally on their own server then 2 or 3 times in the
> morning they will rsync their postgres data on my data center.
> About the power consumption, any advice about some low power hardware are
> also welcome.
>
> Something seems a little flakey about that architecture.  Rsyncng
> postgress data?  There are lots of better ways to merge data into a
> database.  Particularly in these days of cheap, continuous, broadband
> connectivity.  And if you can't get business broadband in all your
> locations, cellular modems are dirt cheap.  (I speak as someone who's
> designed more than a few mobile data collection systems - everything from
> tactical military systems to transit buses).
>
>
>
>
> > Supermicro 1U servers - run two or more of them
> > and it's easy to turn them into a high-available cluster
> >  ...
> > Note:  I'm seriously considering migrating from Debian for our
> > next refresh - I really don't like systemd - might go all the way to BSD
> >or an OpenSolaris distro.
>
> Supermicro seems definitely to propose some great stuff I will take them
> in account. Why do you dislike systemd ? I heard many people saying the
> same thing and I don't really understand what are their motivation except
> initd is less invasive.
>
> It's a spaghetti coded package of crap, that takes over your system and
> does things its way.  I prefer modularity, and control over my systems.
>
>
> I don't really know how to answer to your question but let's try.  We are
> a startup and for the moment we have a production and a development, in
> fact the production is just like a test environment because we do
> continuous delivery, we push everyday in order to know more quickly  when
> something has been broken and our semi-automated tests didn't detect it.
> Personally, I'm a self learner, and probably many guys of my team are too.
> So some advices here are also welcome.
> We want to be able to handle 2500+ rsync in the morning (probably
> distributing them in time in order to avoid a single big load acting as a
> ddos) and for each client of my clients (restaurants) a get and put profile
> request.
> Note: client's profile are shared across restaurants and clients can
> find/filter restaurants on the website which is not yet built but we are
> working on it.
>
> Rsync is just wrong for that kind of application.  What are you syncing,
> anyway.  2500 postgress instances, some raw data files for input to a
> single instance of postgress, something else?  And if the postgress
> instance is feeding live data to apps, you really need to focus first on
> your high-availability strategy - single points of failure will kill you.
>
> Come to think of it, you're a poster child for doing everything in the
> cloud.  As a startup, you've got way too many other things to worry about
> than home brewing an IT environment - focus on your core product/service,
> whatever that is.  (Now, if you're setting up a service bureau, that's
> another story - in which case, hire some folks who actually know how to do
> this stuff.  Here, I'm speaking as someone who HAS homebrewed a small
> service bureau, with serious experience in computing & IT - back before any
> of this stuff was available off the shelf.  It's a royal PITA.  These days,
> I'm far more likely to set up a new domain, or app, on a hosting service,
> than on our cluster - unless & until I know that it needs to be around for
> a while.  Life's too short.)
>
> Miles Fidelman
>
>
>> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>
>

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#224217 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 2020-06-29 10:40, echo test wrote:

 > On 2020-06-28 18:58, David Christensen wrote:

>> ZFS requires a different way of thinking,

> At what level do we have to change our mind?

Thus far, I have had to re-think operations, maintenance, and disaster 
recovery.  As I develop software, I must re-think storage.


> For example will this impact the way to think SELinux (normally no) ?

I do not use SELinux, so I do not know.


>> you have good backup and restore processes for your current systems?
> What are your plans for the new systems?
>> ...
>> Do you desire 24x7 operations, live maintenance, automatic fail-over,
> high-availability, or similar?  If so, how?
>> ...
>> What is your budget and schedule?  Manpower?
> 
> About the budget an manpower, we are creating a financial plan in order to
> present it to our investors, so nothing is well decided for the moment,
> that is why all your answers and suggestions are welcome and very useful.

I suggest doing an inventory of existing equipment and facilities. 
Then, compute replacement costs.  Then document ongoing operations and 
maintenance activities,  Then, compute ongoing operations, maintenance, 
and personnel costs.  Use this data to plan the new data center.


> What is ideal for 24/7 operations,high-availability and auto fail-over ?

Every person is going to have a different definition of "ideal".  The 
starting point is identifying and applying metrics for measuring what 
matters to your company (and to your customers).  Again, I suggest 
computer and network monitoring systems.


> We're 8 in the team for the moment, 2 web and mobile developer and only 2
> peoples know things about system and network (admin,security,..) but we
> plan to get more peoples.
> So please, suggest, in the worst case we will have learned more things.

This is arguably the best general book in its subject area.  Everyone 
involved in the computer industry can benefit from reading it, 
especially managers and investors:

[1] 
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Brooks-Mythical-Man-Month-The-Essays-on-Software-Engineering-Anniversary-Edition-2nd-Edition/PGM172844.html


I liked this book for its specificity.  There are many books available 
in this subject area, often connected to a "quality system".  However, 
be warned that many people resist formal processes, and those that are 
supervisors may become offended by a subordinate who suggests such:

[2] 
https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/Mc-Connell-Software-Project-Survival-Guide/PGM280992.html


David

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#224165 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Du, 28 iun 20, 12:37:14, echo test wrote:
> 
> Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, are you saying that Debian  cannot scale in
> a bigger enterprise ?

Debian can certainly scale from Raspberry Pis to supercomputers.

The issue is more of support:

1. Debian itself doesn't offer support beyond security updates for its 
packages and this list.

You either do it yourself or you hire a third-party (see 
https://www.debian.org/consultants).

2. Hardware vendors don't certify their products with Debian (there is 
no incentive to do so). This matters if you want / must use specialized 
products like RAID controllers, e.g. the vendor may refuse replacing 
defective hardware unless you can prove it's not working on certified 
OSs. I've heard of organizations keeping another OS around just for this 
(similar tactic with Windows on desktops and laptops)

At least Lenovo has shown some interest in cooperating with Debian (see 
the link about the ARM server I posted, as well as this thread on 
-project.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2020/06/msg00000.html

> Can you tell me what happened with hardware RAID solutions?
> 
> > small" could be anything from 10 to 1000 users. Mentioning some numbers
> > could get you more useful recommendations.
> > In any case, some interesting hardware not mentioned so far (don't
> > forget about the power consumption).
> 
> Small here is for me about 2000 users all are restaurants that save their
> selling history locally on their own server then 2 or 3 times in the
> morning they will rsync their postgres data on my data center.
> About the power consumption, any advice about some low power hardware are
> also welcome.

I already posted some.
 
>  Why do you dislike systemd ? I heard many people saying the same
> thing and I don't really understand what are their motivation except initd
> is less invasive.

Better not re-open this discussion. I will just say that Debian has 
basically decided it will use systemd for now.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#224154 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

A few comments on the advice below

On 6/28/20 3:16 AM, David Christensen wrote:
> On 2020-06-26 11:34, echo test wrote:
>
>
> I view Debian as the dominant enthusiast Linux distribution in the 
> USA. I use it on my SOHO laptops and desktops because it mostly works 
> on most x86/x86_64 computers made in the last ~20 years. (But, it is 
> common for the "stable" version not to work on recently designed 
> hardware.)  I also have a Ubiquitti Networks Unifi Controller 
> application stack running on a Debian VPS on the Internet ($5/month).  
> I am the only user and it has never failed. Other people with far more 
> knowledge, skills, and ambition do more with Debian, but the effort 
> appears to be both heroic and lonely. I have yet to hear of an 
> "enterprise" environment built on Debian, but you can tell us about 
> yours when you build it. (URL's for examples of such are welcome.)

Also pretty dominant in enterprise settings - particularly 
universities.  Still built primarily for use on servers.  You find it 
all over cluster configurations.  Scratch a big data analysis cluster 
and you'll likely as not find Debian.


>
> I view FreeBSD as the dominant free x86/x86_64 BSD/Unix server 
> distribution.  I use it on my SOHO servers because the design is 
> traditional, the feel is polished, software packages are recent, and 
> there are good books available [1, 2].  FreeBSD has notable enterprise 
> deployments and commercial derivatives [3].

Yup.  Lots of old-timers prefer BSD for servers.  I've been thinking of 
migrating myself (I just hate systemd).  Also a lot of OpenSolaris 
derivatives out there.

But... for servers, I'd guess that (open source) Ubuntu & CentOS are 
probably a lot more common.

>> with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo ThinkCenter which
>> seems to never mention that they support Debian. What kind of issues 
>> can I
>> encounter with such hardwares except simple cases like having to install
>> missing drivers with some already available firmwares.

You're looking in the wrong place.  Look at the Debian site, for the 
list of supported hardware.  Look at the installation documents for 
driver installation (which is more an issue for peripheral support - is 
there a driver for every device that you plan to install?).

>
>> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
>
> "Enterprise" implies storage area networks.  This requires hardware 
> (and support software).

No, it does not.  Particularly in these days of converged hardware.

RAID is easy - Debian supports a number of software RAID options, and 
most motherboards support some form of hardware RAID (as to many 
external drive enclosures).

Sharing across nodes is easy, too - NFS.

Now, if you want to get fancy, and talk about high-availability, 
failover and such, things get a bit more baroque - we're talking things 
like real-time replication (look at DRBD), and fancy file systems.  And 
things get really tough, if you have multiple sites.  Red Hat has some 
good solutions, out-of-the-box, and last time I looked, they were all 
based on open source components - you could integrate those with CentOS, 
and probably Debian - but it takes a lot of work.

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

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#224161 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 2020-06-28 11:24, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> On 6/28/20 3:16 AM, David Christensen wrote:

>> On 2020-06-26 11:34, echo test wrote:

>> I view Debian as the dominant enthusiast Linux distribution in the 
>> USA.

> Also pretty dominant in enterprise settings - particularly 
> universities.  Still built primarily for use on servers.  You find it 
> all over cluster configurations.  Scratch a big data analysis cluster 
> and you'll likely as not find Debian.

I suspected as much, but haven't seen much news about academia or 
clusters recently.


>> I view FreeBSD as the dominant free x86/x86_64 BSD/Unix server 
>> distribution.

> But... for servers, I'd guess that (open source) Ubuntu & CentOS are 
> probably a lot more common.

According to WikiPedia, Linux dominates.  But, they don't break it down 
by distribution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Public_servers_on_the_Internet


>>> with hardwares like Dell EMC PowerEdge or Lenovo ThinkCenter which
>>> seems to never mention that they support Debian. What kind of issues 
>>> can I
>>> encounter with such hardwares except simple cases like having to install
>>> missing drivers with some already available firmwares.
> 
> You're looking in the wrong place.  Look at the Debian site, for the 
> list of supported hardware.  Look at the installation documents for 
> driver installation (which is more an issue for peripheral support - is 
> there a driver for every device that you plan to install?).


I looked for certified hardware.  Debian is not impressive:

https://wiki.debian.org/Hardware/Certification


FreeBSD is trying:

https://www.freebsd.org/commercial/hardware.html


Red Hat and Ubuntu have established programs:

https://catalog.redhat.com/

https://certification.ubuntu.com/


>>> Note: I will need some RAID solution hard or soft.
>>
>> "Enterprise" implies storage area networks.  This requires hardware 
>> (and support software).
> 
> No, it does not.  Particularly in these days of converged hardware.

Okay.


> RAID is easy - Debian supports a number of software RAID options, and 
> most motherboards support some form of hardware RAID (as to many 
> external drive enclosures).

Yes.  I avoid them.


> Sharing across nodes is easy, too - NFS.

I prefer Samba -- works with Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, macOS, and likely 
more.


> Now, if you want to get fancy, and talk about high-availability, 
> failover and such, things get a bit more baroque - we're talking things 
> like real-time replication (look at DRBD), and fancy file systems.  And 
> things get really tough, if you have multiple sites.  Red Hat has some 
> good solutions, out-of-the-box, and last time I looked, they were all 
> based on open source components - you could integrate those with CentOS, 
> and probably Debian - but it takes a lot of work.

Interesting.


David

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#224162 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 2020-06-28 19:19, David Christensen wrote:

> On 2020-06-28 11:24, Miles Fidelman wrote:

>> RAID is easy - Debian supports a number of software RAID options, and 
>> most motherboards support some form of hardware RAID (as to many 
>> external drive enclosures).
> 
> Yes.  I avoid them.

Correction -- I avoid motherboard and external drive hardware RAID.


David

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#224166 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Du, 28 iun 20, 00:16:05, David Christensen wrote:
> I have yet to
> hear of an "enterprise" environment built on Debian, but you can tell us
> about yours when you build it. (URL's for examples of such are welcome.)

Maybe some of the deployments here fit your definition of "enterprise".

https://www.debian.org/users/

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#224167 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

Il 29/06/20 09:02, Andrei POPESCU ha scritto:
> On Du, 28 iun 20, 00:16:05, David Christensen wrote:
>> I have yet to
>> hear of an "enterprise" environment built on Debian, but you can tell us
>> about yours when you build it. (URL's for examples of such are welcome.)
> Maybe some of the deployments here fit your definition of "enterprise".
>
> https://www.debian.org/users/

Hi Andrei,

I think that this list is outdated. For example the page related to 
BackBlaze reports that they use Debian 4.

These list should be updated to have a real benefit of reading it.

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#224209 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Lu, 29 iun 20, 09:25:03, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> 
> Il 29/06/20 09:02, Andrei POPESCU ha scritto:
> > On Du, 28 iun 20, 00:16:05, David Christensen wrote:
> > > I have yet to
> > > hear of an "enterprise" environment built on Debian, but you can tell us
> > > about yours when you build it. (URL's for examples of such are welcome.)
> > Maybe some of the deployments here fit your definition of "enterprise".
> > 
> > https://www.debian.org/users/
> 
> I think that this list is outdated. For example the page related to
> BackBlaze reports that they use Debian 4.

The list is based on voluntary submissions, so it is challenging to keep 
up to date.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

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#224168 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

On 2020-06-29 00:02, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Du, 28 iun 20, 00:16:05, David Christensen wrote:
>> I have yet to
>> hear of an "enterprise" environment built on Debian, but you can tell us
>> about yours when you build it. (URL's for examples of such are welcome.)
> 
> Maybe some of the deployments here fit your definition of "enterprise".
> 
> https://www.debian.org/users/

Yes, they do.  Thanks for the link -- I searched, but did not find that 
page.  :-)


David

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#224212 — Re: Advice on hardware server to use for small a dedicated data center

debian-user:

I sent the following to the OP rather than the list by mistake...


David



On 2020-06-28 03:34, echo test wrote:

> ... about 2000 users all are restaurants that save their
> selling history locally on their own server then 2 or 3 times in the
> morning they will rsync their postgres data on my data center.

> We are a startup and for the moment we have a production and a
> development, in fact the production is just like a test environment
> because we do continuous delivery, we push everyday in order to know
> more quickly  when something has been broken and our semi-automated
> tests didn't detect it. Personally, I'm a self learner, and probably
> many guys of my team are too. So some advices here are also welcome.

> We want to be able to handle 2500+ rsync in the morning (probably
> distributing them in time in order to avoid a single big load acting
> as a ddos) and for each client of my clients (restaurants) a get and
> put profile request.

> Note: client's profile are shared across restaurants and clients can
> find/filter restaurants on the website which is not yet built but we
> are working on it.


Thank you for describing your services.  That makes it easier for people 
to comment.


It sounds like you have three services -- mail, web, and database.  The 
web and database services interact heavily, but mail not so much.


I once worked on a project with a similar aspect.  One server dialed 
remote data acquisition units and downloaded data updates once a day. 
The engineers would then copy the database from the server to their 
workstations and crunch the numbers.  The data collection server was a 
modest computer.  The engineers always wanted more powerful computers. I 
recall one query took 30+ minutes to run on my workstation.  I added 
indexes for the relevant fields, and the query took a few minutes. 
Powerful hardware is nice, but using it efficiently is even better.


> ZFS beeing a filesystem and mdadm an utility software, I think I'll go
> for mdadm. I didn't know that Debian was supporting ZFS I always used
> Ext4.


For ZFS on Debian, install the 'zfs-dkms' package.


I migrated my file servers from Linux, md, and ext4 to FreeBSD and ZFS 
over the past few years.  ZFS requires a different way of thinking, and 
I am still wrestling with automating system administration chores.  Key 
benefits include unification of the storage stack, flexible storage 
allocation and management, fine-grained control via metadata, detection 
and correction of bit rot, snapshots, and replication.  With careful 
planning, the last feature can replace rsync(1) and has the advantage 
that it can be done both synchronously and asynchronously.  So, you can 
replicate over a network in real-time and you can send a replication 
stream to a file and receive it later.


Given the trends of increasing storage, increasing bandwidth, and flat 
bit error rates, bit rot has become a reality that we must contend with. 
  For file systems, the only two choices I know of are btrfs and ZFS.  I 
chose ZFS.


Similarly so for memory.  I now buy computers with ECC memory.


> ... raspberry pi ... external hard drive ...
> I dislike the idea that if I encrypt my hard drive anybody with enough
> knowledge can just take the SD card and break my encryption.

If all an attacker needs to decrypt your external hard drive is the SD 
card from your Raspberry Pi, then your encryption is not implemented 
correctly.


My practice for external drives is to encrypt them with a random 
alphanumeric password (I believe the current recommendation is 12 or 
more characters).


> About the power consumption, any advice about some low power hardware are
> also welcome.

I believe power consumption for transistors is proportional to clock 
frequency squared.  So, one core running twice as fast does twice the 
work, but consumes four times the power.  If your program(s) can be 
readily divided into many concurrent tasks, a 16-core processor running 
at 2 GHz will accomplish twice the work as a 4-core processor running at 
4 GHz, for the same amount of power.


Choose energy efficient hardware and components, especially power supplies.


Write and use efficient software.


> Why do you dislike systemd ? I heard many people saying the same
> thing and I don't really understand what are their motivation except initd
> is less invasive.

systemd has been debated endlessly.  I install and run Debian 
"oldstable" OOTB, I avoid unofficial packages.  I avoid compiling/ 
installing from source.  As a result, I systemd is mostly invisible to 
me.  If you build your services to run on a Unix-like OS without 
customizing the OS itself, that would simplify things.


> On 2020-06-28 00:16, David Christensen wrote:

>> Even if you do not use their services, you might find it useful to
>> emulate them and implement a private cloud.

> Very interesting, can you tell me more about that emulation process please ?

There has been a trend towards virtualization and containerization for 
many years.  Open- and closed-source ideas and solutions are developed 
in parallel.  If you go with a commercial provider, they will have put 
the pieces in place so you can focus on your app.  But, your app must be 
designed to fit into their solution.  If you would rather do all it 
yourself with open-source software, then it's a matter of researching 
all the pieces and making them happen in your environment.  If you 
choose your pieces to match a commercial offering that is based on 
open-source software, it is possible that your app could work in both 
places.  Study the commercial offerings.  On Linux, I expect you will 
see Kubernetes and Docker.  That said, I use FreeBSD and jails for Samba 
and CVS services.  My Debian VPS/ network management service is vendor 
specific (linode.com).  I use VirtualBox on my Debian desktop for 
development work.


Are you monitoring your current services?  If so, you could compare 
measurements against hardware, and then scale to your goals.


Rolling out changes directly from development to production is risky 
(but I've done it too).  Now would be the time to implement two sets of 
equipment, one for live and one for standby, and the means to swap which 
is live and which is not.  That way, you could deploy to the standby 
set, test, swap roles if good, and swap back if the updates later fail. 
The crux will be keeping live data up to date on both machines.


Do you have good backup and restore processes for your current systems? 
What are your plans for the new systems?


Do you desire 24x7 operations, live maintenance, automatic fail-over, 
high-availability, or similar?  If so, how?


What is your budget and schedule?  Manpower?


David

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