Toolserver:Admin:Shopping list

Some things we might want to buy, roughly in order of most important first.


 * (+) two new servers for redundant user databases; X4150 ~$4000 each (8 disks)
 * two more database servers (one redundant) to handle the two new clusters, S4 and S5
 * (+) new database server to replace yarrow (~8000 EUR)
 * MySQL support|: EUR430/server/year basic (2 incidents), or EUR1'500/server/year silver
 * additional 2530 array (for hemlock?) to store various backups, user-store, database dumps..., or else expand the /home array (could use the one from amaranth? shipping?)
 * two more stackable switches so we can have two redundant switches per rack
 * a spare or two for each type of disk we might need

(+) = budgeted


 * a new database that could store the complete text in uncompressed form for easy access by users (~5-10TB?)
 * could use zedler's old SATA array for this
 * a new database that could store the DBpedia data. Find out how to get that into MySQL, and how much it would be. This should actually be paried with the respective wiki databases, on the same servers.
 * a new database that could store all the access data collected from teh squids. This should actually be paried with the respective wiki databases, on the same servers.

Wish list
Things that would be nice, if we could afford them.

Storage:

We should use large arrays instead of dedicated storage per system. Currently, a lot of storage and throughput is wasted because all servers have the same configuration, while some use less space and handle less load. By moving storage to a single array, there's no waste. This also means we could allocate storage more flexibly; e.g. adding more space when a server runs out of disk. Depending on size, 1 array could handle from 5 to unlimited database servers.


 * Examples:
 * Sun 6180. Up to 112 disks.  Chassis: EUR33'700.  Disk module with 16x 146G disks (2.3TB): EUR26'000.  With 16x 600G disks (9.6TB): EUR76'200.
 * Sun 6580. Up to 256 disks.  Chassis: EUR53'200.  Chassis + 16x 300GB disk + rack: EUR177'200.  Disk module with 16x 146G disks (2.3TB): EUR26'000.  With 16x 600G disks (9.6TB): EUR76'200.

Servers:

RISC Unix systems might be nice. These tend to be more reliable than cheap x86 hardware. We could use them only for important services and keep x86 for login servers.


 * Examples:
 * Sun M3000. SPARC64.  Up to 4 (1x4) cores, 64GB RAM.  With 4 cores, 32GB, 2 disks: EUR34'400.  With 8GB: EUR14'900.
 * Sun M4000. SPARC64.  Up to 16 (4x4) cores, 256GB RAM, 2 domains.  With 4 cores (1x4), 32 GB: EUR 38'100.  With 16 cores, 32GB: EUR49'300.
 * Sun T5140. UltraSPARC T2+.  Up to 2 processors, 16 cores, 128 threads, 128GB RAM.  With 2x 6-core CPU (96 threads), 16GB RAM: EUR 19'500.  With 2x 8-core CPU (128 threads), 32GB: EUR 29'200.
 * IBM p5 510. Up to 2 CPUs, 32GB RAM.  2 core, 2GB: EUR 4'536.
 * IBM p5 520. Up to 4 CPUS, 64GB RAM.  With 4x 4.7GHz cores, 8GB RAM: EUR14'683.