A little background…

We've been reliably running InterMapper on an old cast-off server ca. 2004 
vintage -- 32-bit Linux and 2 GB RAM.  Admittedly, we're not using all of the 
fancy features like database and L2.  Here's what we currently have:

- Currently monitoring 2105 devices on a 30-sec poll interval.  Many devices 
have multiple probes.
- We are doing some strip-charting, but most of our historical stuff is being 
logged in Cacti.
- IMDC installed and running, but just for Active Directory authentication.
- ~10 active users monitoring and editing maps daily
- We do use IM Flows -- 4 exporters at ~10,000,000 flows/hr.

The only time we've ever had any problems was when the same server was running 
IM Flows, and we've since moved that function to a separate server which 
happens to be our DR system for InterMapper.

I have the opportunity to replace these systems with some "real" production 
hardware.  Here are the recommended specs per Dartware:

IM FLOWS:
FLOWS PER HOUR RECOMMENDED MINIMUM SPEC
10 million Quad or Dual core, 16 GB of RAM
Requires 64-bit Windows, Linux, Unix, or Macintosh hardware.

InterMapper:
# Devices CPU RAM Disk With IM Database
1000 devices Quad Core 4 GB 200 GB 700 GB
More devices Quad Core Contact 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> for details

I know that you should buy as much hardware as you can afford at the bottom and 
only as much as you need at the top.  Given our satisfactory performance to 
date on old hardware (yay Linux!  yay InterMapper!) I'm trying to gauge the 
best overall solution for our environment.

I've spec'd out a modern dual-quad-core system with 16 GB RAM and 2x 1 TB hard 
disks (SATA) 7200 RPM.  Some concerns I have:

- Would like to enable all available features.
- With IMDC running in full, is 7200 SATA sufficient to prevent disk I/O 
bottlenecks?  What about adding IM Flows on top of that?  Perhaps a SAS-based 
15K RPM solution is more appropriate?  Would software RAID 0 (Linux) present 
any performance issues?
- IM Flows appears to be a 64-bit application.  What about InterMapper itself?  
Given the 4 GB RAM requirement above it doesn't seem likely.

I'm looking for any feedback from the group based on your own experiences.  The 
ultimate question really becomes, "If I could build the ultimate InterMapper 
server, it would include…?"


As an adjunct to this discussion, our DR solution to date has been a nightly 
rsync of our InterMapper_Settings folder to a separate "cold standby" server.  
Are there more elegant ways to implement a real DR solution given two 
similarly-spec'd systems?  Feedback here is welcome, too.

Thanks in advance for your participation!
--
Dave Stempien
University of Rochester Medical Center
585-276-8001

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