subject:"Re\: Advice on Hardware"

Miles Fidelman wrote: 
> On 6/29/20 9:10 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> 
> > Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Now who's being pedantic?

Precisely.

> And isn't this exactly what I said??? mdadm is an admin program, it doesn't
> perform the raid function.

And it's OK to refer to the whole thing as an mdadm RAID.

-dsr-

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

2020-06-29 Thread David Christensen

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

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

2020-06-29 Thread Miles Fidelman

Actually, he seems to be designing a central database to support 2000 
retail restaurants.


And based on most recent posts, seems to be pre-startup designing a product.

My sense is that what he really needs is somebody on the team who 
understands distributed enterprise architectures.


Miles


On 6/29/20 2:00 AM, Leslie Rhorer wrote:
Not necessarily, and in particular not given his needs, if I 
recall them correctly.  LVM is fine for many purposes, but it is not 
required, nor is a network file system.  My servers at home have no 
partitions and no LVM, and I have the RAID system for the data volume 
formatted as XFS.  I use separate partitioned SSDs for booting and swap.


On 6/28/2020 3:48 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

On 6/28/20 3:58 PM, D. R. Evans wrote:


Dan Ritter wrote on 6/26/20 1:41 PM:

echo test wrote:


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

We are firmly of the opinion that mdadm or ZFS are the best
solutions here.


Absolutely.

Actually I'd go further and differentiate the two by suggesting that 
if you
use ECC memory (which you definitely should for a business server) 
then ZFS is
the way to go. If for some reason you can't use ECC memory, then 
mdadm is
arguably the thing to use (although there is certainly a valid 
position that
says that ZFS is /still/ the right one). At least, that's the way I 
have my

systems configured.


Just to be clear... mdadm is NOT raid - it's an admin program for 
managing linux raid (md) devices.  And then you need to worry about 
LVM (logical volume manager), and a network file system on top of them.


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

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

2020-06-29 Thread Miles Fidelman


On 6/29/20 9:10 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:


Miles Fidelman wrote:

Just to be clear... mdadm is NOT raid - it's an admin program for managing
linux raid (md) devices.?? And then you need to worry about LVM (logical
volume manager), and a network file system on top of them.

Just to be clear, you are being pedantic bordering on wrong here. This
is like saying "a hamburger is not ground beef patties, and then you
need to worry about vegetables and condiments".

mdadm is the administrative interface program for the kernel's md
subsystem. It is used generically as a synonym for "the kernel's
md subsystem" because for most people encountering them, they
are inextricably intertwined.

The kernel's md subsystem manages RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10. It
also has a non-RAID linear mode, a container abstraction, and a
fault-simulation mode.


Now who's being pedantic?

And isn't this exactly what I said?  mdadm is an admin program, it 
doesn't perform the raid function.




LVM is completely independent of the md subsystem, and can be
used with or without it. Some people love it. Some avoid it like
the plague -- oops. Some avoid it like rational people avoid the
plague.

Various network file systems are also completely independent of
the md subsystem.
ZFS is an integrated data storage system that presents N
filesystem and partition-equivalent views to the kernel. It is
independent of and an alternative to md and lvm. It offers a
semi-integrated NFS and CIFS export facility. Underneath, it
offers storage options including error-detection, compression, mirroring,
striping, RAID-5 and -6 style parity, read caching and write
caching. Only the error detection is mandatory.

I'm pretty sure we all know this.  The point is that comparing mdadm to 
ZFS is an apples to oranges comparison.  You don't chose between mdadm 
and ZFS, you chose between ZFS and a stack of software that performs the 
same set of functions.


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

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 19:28:12 +0300
Reco  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 12:15:22PM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:58:18 +0300
> > Reco  wrote:
> > 
> > >   Hi.
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:51:52AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > > > > > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > > > > > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my 
> > > > > > understanding
> > > > > > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a 
> > > > > > switch
> > > > > > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.
> > > > > 
> > > > > It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
> > > > > OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.
> > > > 
> > > > OPX is SDN? My understanding was that it was simply an open source
> > > > replacement for the proprietary switch OSs that are more commonly run
> > > > on switch hardware.
> > > 
> > > Call it as you like. Managed switch emulator, replacement for switch
> > > firmware or whatever. It's a software-only (or mostly if we count DPPK)
> > > solution that can turn commodity hardware in a low-tier switch. Add
> > > several of those and you have an SDN.
> > 
> > ? Open Switch (OPX) doesn't turn commodity hardware in[to] a low-tier
> > switch - it runs on high-tier switches, instead of the proprietary
> > switch Osss that are more commonly used. It's not an emulator. Perhaps
> > you're thinking of Open vSwitch (OVS)?
> 
> I need to learn to pay attention while reading. You're correct, I'm
> mistaken.

:) You actually know this stuff, and so make the occasional careless
mistake. I'm reading up on it and writing emails as I go along ...

Celejar

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

2020-06-29 Thread David Christensen


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

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

2020-06-29 Thread Andrei POPESCU

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:32:40 +0200
MAS Jean-Louis  wrote:

...

> We have about  100 servers now, mostly Dell, and we are working with
> Dell for about 17 years, without any troubles. We owned several hundred
> Dell's servers during those years, mostly running on Debian.
> 
> Everything work fine with Debian out of the box, sometime you need
> firmware for Broadcom network cards, no more that that.

Yes, indeed:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=895258

Celejar

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

2020-06-29 Thread MAS Jean-Louis

Le 29/06/2020 à 17:31, Reco a écrit :

> I see nothing wrong with Dell servers per se. If one really needs
> something relatively cheap and durable - there's nothing wrong with
> Dell (or Supermicro, but that's politics again). But, it's Tier 2, not
> 1. So - my quote at the top.

We have about  100 servers now, mostly Dell, and we are working with
Dell for about 17 years, without any troubles. We owned several hundred
Dell's servers during those years, mostly running on Debian.

Everything work fine with Debian out of the box, sometime you need
firmware for Broadcom network cards, no more that that.

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.

Regards

-- 
Jean Louis Mas



smime.p7s
Description: Signature cryptographique S/MIME

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

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 12:15:22PM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:58:18 +0300
> Reco  wrote:
> 
> > Hi.
> > 
> > On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:51:52AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > > > > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > > > > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> > > > > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> > > > > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.
> > > > 
> > > > It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
> > > > OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.
> > > 
> > > OPX is SDN? My understanding was that it was simply an open source
> > > replacement for the proprietary switch OSs that are more commonly run
> > > on switch hardware.
> > 
> > Call it as you like. Managed switch emulator, replacement for switch
> > firmware or whatever. It's a software-only (or mostly if we count DPPK)
> > solution that can turn commodity hardware in a low-tier switch. Add
> > several of those and you have an SDN.
> 
> ? Open Switch (OPX) doesn't turn commodity hardware in[to] a low-tier
> switch - it runs on high-tier switches, instead of the proprietary
> switch Osss that are more commonly used. It's not an emulator. Perhaps
> you're thinking of Open vSwitch (OVS)?

I need to learn to pay attention while reading. You're correct, I'm
mistaken.

Reco

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:58:18 +0300
Reco  wrote:

>   Hi.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:51:52AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > > > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > > > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> > > > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> > > > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.
> > > 
> > > It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
> > > OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.
> > 
> > OPX is SDN? My understanding was that it was simply an open source
> > replacement for the proprietary switch OSs that are more commonly run
> > on switch hardware.
> 
> Call it as you like. Managed switch emulator, replacement for switch
> firmware or whatever. It's a software-only (or mostly if we count DPPK)
> solution that can turn commodity hardware in a low-tier switch. Add
> several of those and you have an SDN.

? Open Switch (OPX) doesn't turn commodity hardware in[to] a low-tier
switch - it runs on high-tier switches, instead of the proprietary
switch Osss that are more commonly used. It's not an emulator. Perhaps
you're thinking of Open vSwitch (OVS)?

Celejar

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

Hi.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:51:52AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> > > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> > > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.
> > 
> > It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
> > OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.
> 
> OPX is SDN? My understanding was that it was simply an open source
> replacement for the proprietary switch OSs that are more commonly run
> on switch hardware.

Call it as you like. Managed switch emulator, replacement for switch
firmware or whatever. It's a software-only (or mostly if we count DPPK)
solution that can turn commodity hardware in a low-tier switch. Add
several of those and you have an SDN.

Reco

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 18:21:08 +0300
Reco  wrote:

>   Hi.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 10:50:43AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400
> > Dan Ritter  wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > To give an idea of what you might buy:
> > > 
> > > a firewall/router
> > > a switch
> > > a load-balancer
> > > 2 web servers
> > > a database server
> > > a mail server
> > > a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups
> > > 
> > > All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on
> > > Debian servers. 
> > 
> > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.
> 
> It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
> OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.

OPX is SDN? My understanding was that it was simply an open source
replacement for the proprietary switch OSs that are more commonly run
on switch hardware.

> But as long as we're talking routing traffic up to 1Gbps for that
> typical SOHO - you don't need OpenSwtich at all, stock Linux kernel will
> do it just fine. It's the hardware that gets tricky here - they do not
> set up that many Ethernet ports on a typical server/consumer hardware as
> one expects from a typical switch.
> 
> 
> > I have no idea if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation -
> > basic switches are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I
> > looked at on the OPX HCL.
> 
> In general situation it won't be cost-effective. You just cannot beat
> the cost of D-Link switch ($250 for that typical 1Gbps 24 ports) with
> the cost of 1U server ($2000 and up). One could try to cut the costs
> with consumer hardware or even SBCs, but where come the questions of
> reliability, remote management, etc.

Understood, thanks.

Celejar

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 11:09:02 -0400
Dan Ritter  wrote:

> Celejar wrote: 
> > On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400
> > Dan Ritter  wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > > To give an idea of what you might buy:
> > > 
> > > a firewall/router
> > > a switch
> > > a load-balancer
> > > 2 web servers
> > > a database server
> > > a mail server
> > > a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups
> > > 
> > > All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on
> > > Debian servers. 
> > 
> > I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> > experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> > that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> > by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch. I have no idea
> > if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation - basic switches
> > are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I looked at on the
> > OPX HCL.
> 
> Yes, and yes, those are fairly high-end switches compared to
> what people tend to use in homes and offices.
> 
> In many situations, people don't even need a manageable
> switch. Once you start to exceed, say, 40 connections, a managed
> switch becomes first useful and then necessity. When you need
> multi-chassis failover and intra-switch links of more complexity
> than "each desktop gets an 8 port gig-e switch with one used as
> an uplink to the office switch", you need high-end switch
> features.


Gotcha. I did realize that those were higher on the food chain when I
saw that they started at 10GB and went up from there ...

Celejar

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

Hi.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 11:22:21AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> > Anything else is at least one tier lower so why bother discussing it?
> 
> What do you have against Dell?

I have a troubled past with EMC :)

> Everything I've read indicates that their enterprise gear is very
> good, and quite affordable, particularly on the second-hand market. I
> have very limited experience in this area, but I've been running
> Debian on a used R210 II for a while and it has been rock solid.

I see nothing wrong with Dell servers per se. If one really needs
something relatively cheap and durable - there's nothing wrong with
Dell (or Supermicro, but that's politics again). But, it's Tier 2, not
1. So - my quote at the top.

Reco

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

On Mon, 29 Jun 2020 16:45:48 +0300
Reco  wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 01:27:05AM +1200, Richard Hector wrote:
> > > I'll be original here. Try SunFire X-series (aka SunServer X). Somewhat
> > > costly, and the hardware quality is a hit or miss in newer models, but
> > > runs Debian stable like it was designed for it.
> > 
> > I'm a little unclear what you're suggesting here - Sun Fire and Sun
> > Server seem to be both retired names (according to Wikipedia, anyway ...)
> 
> I'm suggesting x86-64 Intel server with an Oracle logo on it.
> I agree to call it whatever they call it at Oracle these days be it
> SunFire, SunServer or whatever.
> Whenever said server(s) will be bought from the Oracle, a certain
> partners or, say, Ebay - I don't see how it can be relevant here.
> 
> 
> > Are you suggesting Oracle servers in general?
> 
> Yep. I can say a lot of bad things about HPE hardware (but I won't, it'll
> be off-topic), and I can't say anything good about Lenovo (those IBM
> X-series were not bad, but it was a long time ago). Also, last one is a
> political thing, and this list is an unsuitable place for discussing
> political things.
> I could also mention Huawei, but I won't - it's a political thing too.
> Oracle servers (five years ago, at least) tend to Just Work™, barring
> that usual "half-year after the purchase" time period.
> 
> Anything else is at least one tier lower so why bother discussing it?

What do you have against Dell? Everything I've read indicates that
their enterprise gear is very good, and quite affordable, particularly
on the second-hand market. I have very limited experience in this area,
but I've been running Debian on a used R210 II for a while and it has
been rock solid.

Celejar

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

Hi.

On Mon, Jun 29, 2020 at 10:50:43AM -0400, Celejar wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400
> Dan Ritter  wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > To give an idea of what you might buy:
> > 
> > a firewall/router
> > a switch
> > a load-balancer
> > 2 web servers
> > a database server
> > a mail server
> > a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups
> > 
> > All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on
> > Debian servers. 
> 
> I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch.

It's possible. Does not mean that typical enterprise is doing it.
OpenSwitch and SDNs in general are big data center toys.

But as long as we're talking routing traffic up to 1Gbps for that
typical SOHO - you don't need OpenSwtich at all, stock Linux kernel will
do it just fine. It's the hardware that gets tricky here - they do not
set up that many Ethernet ports on a typical server/consumer hardware as
one expects from a typical switch.

> I have no idea if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation -
> basic switches are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I
> looked at on the OPX HCL.

In general situation it won't be cost-effective. You just cannot beat
the cost of D-Link switch ($250 for that typical 1Gbps 24 ports) with
the cost of 1U server ($2000 and up). One could try to cut the costs
with consumer hardware or even SBCs, but where come the questions of
reliability, remote management, etc.

Reco

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

Celejar wrote: 
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400
> Dan Ritter  wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> > To give an idea of what you might buy:
> > 
> > a firewall/router
> > a switch
> > a load-balancer
> > 2 web servers
> > a database server
> > a mail server
> > a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups
> > 
> > All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on
> > Debian servers. 
> 
> I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
> experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
> that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
> by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch. I have no idea
> if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation - basic switches
> are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I looked at on the
> OPX HCL.

Yes, and yes, those are fairly high-end switches compared to
what people tend to use in homes and offices.

In many situations, people don't even need a manageable
switch. Once you start to exceed, say, 40 connections, a managed
switch becomes first useful and then necessity. When you need
multi-chassis failover and intra-switch links of more complexity
than "each desktop gets an 8 port gig-e switch with one used as
an uplink to the office switch", you need high-end switch
features.

-dsr-

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

On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 15:41:13 -0400
Dan Ritter  wrote:

...

> To give an idea of what you might buy:
> 
> a firewall/router
> a switch
> a load-balancer
> 2 web servers
> a database server
> a mail server
> a general utility box with lots of storage to handle backups
> 
> All of those duties except the switch can reasonable be run on
> Debian servers. 

I'm curious, although I don't know much about, and have little
experience with, enterprise hardware. Am I correct in my understanding
that it is actually possible to run (more-or-less) Debian on a switch
by using OpenSwitch (OPX) on an Open Networking switch. I have no idea
if this would be cost-effective in the OP's situation - basic switches
are certainly a whole lot cheaper than the ones I looked at on the
OPX HCL.

Celejar

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

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 01:27:05AM +1200, Richard Hector wrote:
> > I'll be original here. Try SunFire X-series (aka SunServer X). Somewhat
> > costly, and the hardware quality is a hit or miss in newer models, but
> > runs Debian stable like it was designed for it.
> 
> I'm a little unclear what you're suggesting here - Sun Fire and Sun
> Server seem to be both retired names (according to Wikipedia, anyway ...)

I'm suggesting x86-64 Intel server with an Oracle logo on it.
I agree to call it whatever they call it at Oracle these days be it
SunFire, SunServer or whatever.
Whenever said server(s) will be bought from the Oracle, a certain
partners or, say, Ebay - I don't see how it can be relevant here.

> Are you suggesting Oracle servers in general?

Yep. I can say a lot of bad things about HPE hardware (but I won't, it'll
be off-topic), and I can't say anything good about Lenovo (those IBM
X-series were not bad, but it was a long time ago). Also, last one is a
political thing, and this list is an unsuitable place for discussing
political things.
I could also mention Huawei, but I won't - it's a political thing too.
Oracle servers (five years ago, at least) tend to Just Work™, barring
that usual "half-year after the purchase" time period.

Anything else is at least one tier lower so why bother discussing it?

> Personally, I'd require a lot of convincing to use anything of theirs ...

They don't pay me for this, I don't work for them.
Their support (both software and hardware) could use an improvement (to
put it lightly), but the hardware itself haven't spoiled for the last
5-10 years or so.

Reco

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

2020-06-29 Thread Richard Hector

On 27/06/20 8:02 am, Reco wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 08:34:07PM +0200, echo test wrote:
>> 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.

> I'll be original here. Try SunFire X-series (aka SunServer X). Somewhat
> costly, and the hardware quality is a hit or miss in newer models, but
> runs Debian stable like it was designed for it.

I'm a little unclear what you're suggesting here - Sun Fire and Sun
Server seem to be both retired names (according to Wikipedia, anyway ...)

Are you suggesting Oracle servers in general?

Personally, I'd require a lot of convincing to use anything of theirs ...

I agree the Sun-era x86 servers were nice.

Richard

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

Miles Fidelman wrote: 
> Just to be clear... mdadm is NOT raid - it's an admin program for managing
> linux raid (md) devices.?? And then you need to worry about LVM (logical
> volume manager), and a network file system on top of them.

Just to be clear, you are being pedantic bordering on wrong here. This
is like saying "a hamburger is not ground beef patties, and then you
need to worry about vegetables and condiments".

mdadm is the administrative interface program for the kernel's md
subsystem. It is used generically as a synonym for "the kernel's
md subsystem" because for most people encountering them, they
are inextricably intertwined. 

The kernel's md subsystem manages RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10. It
also has a non-RAID linear mode, a container abstraction, and a
fault-simulation mode.

LVM is completely independent of the md subsystem, and can be
used with or without it. Some people love it. Some avoid it like
the plague -- oops. Some avoid it like rational people avoid the
plague.

Various network file systems are also completely independent of
the md subsystem.

ZFS is an integrated data storage system that presents N
filesystem and partition-equivalent views to the kernel. It is
independent of and an alternative to md and lvm. It offers a
semi-integrated NFS and CIFS export facility. Underneath, it
offers storage options including error-detection, compression, mirroring,
striping, RAID-5 and -6 style parity, read caching and write
caching. Only the error detection is mandatory.

-dsr-

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