How to choice and build perfect server

There are a lot of questions about the server components, and how to choice and/or build perfect server with consider the power consumption. So I decide to write about this topic.

Key Points:

• What kind of components the servers needs


• The Green Computing and the Servers components.


• How much power the server consume.


• Choice the right components: Processors, HDD, RAID, Memory
  
  
• Build Server, or buy?

Gear6 Web cache - the hardware solution for working with Memcache

The Gear6 Web Cache hybrid DRAM-flash memory architecture allows for 5-10 times more memcache memory per unit of rack space than DRAM-only configurations, and cuts memory costs by 50%. Other software enhancements include a slab allocator that is more efficient than traditional memcache implementations due to its fine-grained bucket sizing. Gear6 Web Cache also supports object sizes greater than 1 megabyte and manages evictions based on the cost of replacing objects, depending on the size and frequency of object access. It intelligently places cache instances across DRAM and flash, taking into account their different characteristics, while at the same time monitoring their health and detecting and de‐allocating faulty or failing memory.

Gear6 Web Cache is a Memcached protocol compliant solution that scales and accelerates web applications, reduces memory footprint, enhances availability and implements comprehensive Memcached management features. Designed to work with all popular memcache clients, Gear6 Web Cache integrates seamlessly into existing deployments and immediately provides a scalable, high density caching solution for your web application environment.

Some of the web services which are using Gear6 are Answers.com (wiki answers), Veoh.com (online video), myYearBook.com (social network).

Read more about Gear6 hardware and customer cases studies on Gear6 website

Platform virtualization - top 25 providers (software, hardware, combined)

In this article they present the companies which offers means (mainly, the software and hardware) which powers most of the cloud computing hosting providers, namely virtualization solutions.

Read the entire article about Platform virtualization - top 25 providers (software, hardware, combined) at MyTestBox.com - web software reviews, news, tips & tricks.

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Shard servers -- go big or small?

Hello everyone, I'm designing a website/widget that my business partner and I expect to serve millions of hits daily. As such we must shard our database (and we're designing with shards in mind right from the beginning). However, the one thing I haven't been able to figure out from Googling is the best hardware to go with for shards. I'm using exclusively InnoDB tables. We'll (eventually) be running 3 groups of database servers: a) Session servers for php sessions. These will have a very high write volume. b) ID servers. These will match a couple primary indices (such as user ID) to a given shard. These will have an intense read load, plus a moderate amount of writes. c) Shard servers. These will hold the bulk of the data. These will have a high read load and a lowish write load. Group A is done as a database instead of using memcached so users aren't logged out if a memcached server goes down. As the write load is high, a pair of high performance master-master servers seems obvious. What's the ideal hardware setup for machines with this role? Maxed RAM and fast disks seem reasonable. Should I bother with RAID > 0 if I have a live backup on the other master? I hear 4 cores is optimal for InnoDB -- recommendations? Group B. Again, it looks like maxed RAM is recommended here. What about disks? Should I go for 10K or will regular SATA2 drives be okay? RAID 0, 5, 10? Cores? Should I think about slaves to a master-master setup? Group C. It seems to me these machines can be of any capacity because the data they hold is easily spread between shards. What is the query-per-second per dollar sweet spot when it comes to cores and number of disks? Should I beef these machines up, or stick with low end hardware? Should I still max the RAM? I have some other thoughts on system setup, too. As the data stored in the PHP sessions won't change frequently (it'll likely remain static for a user's entire visit -- all variable data can be stored in Group C shard servers), I'm thinking of using a memcached setup in front of the database and only pushing writes through to the database when necessary. Your thoughts? We're also starting this on a minimal budget (of course), so where in the above is it best spent? Keep in mind that I can recycle machines used in Group A & B in Group C as times goes on. Anyway, I'd love to hear from the expertise of the forum. I've been reading for a long time, and I'll be writing as our project evolves :) --Mark

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