It's about the heat

I've been getting concerned lately with heat. The temperature kind, that is. With the increase in the number of servers I run 24/7 I'm not only doing my bit for global warming but also for the heating of my server room which is, at present, the small bedroom. Not that it has had a bed in it for over 40 years, but it still gets called that!

So during the winter the fans have been cooling the machines and warming the room, which spills over into heating the house a bit. But last summer — with only two servers — it got pretty hot in there (no aircon or even fixed ventilation) and so now I'm thinking ahead to this year and the greater heat output of four servers.

The present option under consideration is moving them all to one end of the garage and building a 'server space' there. I could even fit a extractor fan too, though I have worries about security. I did consider utilising the loft space but that already gets exceedingly hot in summer because of all the sun on the roof above.

Anyone else solved this problem or have alternative suggestions?

Out the window

I've been very satisfied with the beta and release candidates of Windows 7 but the lifetime of the (free) RC is rapidly coming to an end and I had to consider my options as it had been the OS on my main laptop for the past year.

Except for one machine in London (mostly my tv and file archiver) all my other machines (up to 10 in regular use, including servers and notebook) all run on Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris, so the question under review was "do I actually *need* Windows?

So I made a list of the software I use. Much of it is FLOSS (Free, Libre, Open Source Software) or other 'free' stuff. Only a few programs are paid-for-in-hard-cash (such as my font tools).

The FLOSS stuff is nearly all cross-platform, so that was OK. The 'free' stuff is mostly available on other platforms, so might be OK. The paid-for stuff could either be replaced, chucked, or run under Wine if on Linux.

So I thought a little more … and scrapped Windows. Loved it and left it!

This post was just written on a laptop now running Ubuntu 9.10 with the 2.6.31-19 Linux Kernel and Gnome 2.28.1

The tweak that broke

Yes, I had a little accident ;-P

With the increase in technology came an increase in what I'd like to do with that technology, specifically be able to offer secure (https://) connections for security purposes on some of the sites I host. And although there have been moves to make virtual hosting of port 443 secure sites possible, they rely on changes to browsers which — as we all know — are a bit like a brick swimming against the prevailing current. Instead, therefore, just as with the ten year old specification of IPv6, we are required to use one IP (v4) address for each secure connection we wish to enable. So I obtained an increase in my IP allocation from a /29 (five effective addresses) to a /28 (with thirteen). Plans were made for a nice, smooth transition using proper scheduling of DNS and MX record changes when … I accidentally pulled the power on the modem-router and the change happened instantly. Without any of the advance setup.

Needless to say I was grateful for being the only person around at that moment as the world was filled with my choice 'language' about the unfortunate event, and I set to in trying to recover the systems. And, for the most part, I got the connections working again within the hour save for waiting for DNS servers around the world to play catch-up.

But e-mail wasn't arriving. My (Zimbra-based) mail server cold send messages out fine, but nothing seemed to be coming inbound. Eventually this was traced to a configuration error with my carrier this afternoon and they reset their end of things. Great? Well, no actually. At this end I lost all connectivity entirely. The outside world could see my router, yet I couldn't get beyond it. Three hours later the software-hardware-firmware-network interactions were finally resolved, I'm happy to say, so now everything should by A1 Bristol fashion.

That three hours without any connection was a bit scary though …

Back on-line

Did you miss me?

Over the last few days I've been upgrading the server kit I use to run my websites and API services on. The main server moved up from a dual 2.4GHz Xeon to dual 2.8Ghx Xeons, and from 2Gb of RAM tripled to 6Gb. I think that should cope with almost anything that gets thrown at it. (It is presently running around 50 websites and 3 million rows of MySQL data).

I also hived off my public NTP and DNS functions on to a separate box, and after reading some time back about how FreeBSD is a far better operating system for running the NTP daemon that is what the box running these services now is using. And I have to say the improvement in stability is amazing; something around a factor of 10⁴.

There are a few more tweaks to come, but glad to be back.

Are the EVE-Online servers moving to Iceland?

Yesterday I noted an interesting article on the BBC website about a firm setting up a 'green' server farm operation in Iceland to make use of the carbon-zero geothermal electricity alongside the lower ambient temperature to reduce the usually substantial overhead of cooling computer servers.

The article went on to note that Iceland is about to substantially increase its presence on the internet backbones with the Farice , Cantat-3, and new Danice high-capacity fibre links now on stream, and that the company concerned — Verne Global — hoped to gain a substantial number of customers by the cost reductions available to clients who move their servers there. They also made great play of how stable the underlying bedrock is in that area, close by Keflavik airport†. Indeed, their website has lots of interesting information on it.

Then I noticed a name I recognised; Vilhjálmur Thorsteinsson is Chairman of the Board of Verne Holdings. He is also Chairman of the Board of CCP Games, who created and operate EVE-Online. Given that the EVE universe is a "single shard" — every player world-wide uses the same physical group of servers and plays in the same 'space' — then, unlike other online games which have servers located in different continents, all of the EVE-Online servers are in one physical locations. Just outside London, UK, in Slough.

The Verne website makes great play of their centre being only 18ms from London (as the internet flies) and 36 milliseconds from New York. So, given the CCP Chairman is now creating this 'cooler' server centre one can't help but wonder whether the CCP servers will now be moving to Iceland to save money, as well as the planet.

† Keflavik — a former US Air Force base — also happens to be one of the rare airfields which is long enough and wide enough for the Space shuttle to land at in an emergency.