Dell R810 platform
4x Intel Xeon E7-8837 2.67GHz 8 core processor
128GB RAM
6x300GB 10k RPM SAS drives (RAID5 using 1 as a hot spare)
This server is for running simulations. It is not serving up webpages, or in fact for any sort of internet application. I needed plenty of parallel power and this is what would fit the budget and requirements best.
So what did I do with it?
Before I start, one of the reasons I am writing this blog is to get input. If while reading this you see something that looks wrong, or a mistake, or that there is a better way to do it then feel free to drop me a line. Let me know where I have gone wrong, and feel free to suggest improvements.
This beast chews a large amount of electricity and makes a lot of noise. It also pumps out a huge amount of heat. My office is small so we elected to host it at a server farm near by and let them worry about all that. When it arrive I went down there and installed it. Spending a day in a server room is not fun if you don't have warm enough clothes, I can also recommend some fingerless gloves.
Annoyingly when I started to install the OS I noticed something wrong with the Harddrive space. I stopped the install and rebooted in the RAID management system. Someone hadn't seen my note about having one hot spare. I had to rebuild the RAID which took a while because the initialization took forever. Having sorted that little problem out I proceeded to install Ubuntu Server 11.10.
The simulation program that I have created is a written in Java and has a GUI front end for configuring the specifics of each individual simulation. That meant some sort of graphical window manager. I installed unity-2d ( I am pretty sure that this was a mistake). Once installed I added GNU Screen, the Oracle version of Java, Eclipse, Firefox, Webmin and FreeNX.
Reasons for my decisions:
Ubuntu
I am most familiar with this distribution, I use it at home and for other systems at work. I feel comfortable with it and under the time constraints felt I needed to chose something that required no time for me to learn. Debian could have worked too as they are pretty similar and both use apt. Given that they are similar I reasoned that there would be no difference either way, so I stuck to Debian. My Other reasonable option was CentOS. Not being familiar with that or with yum, I decided that I did not want to spend the whole day looking up how to install and operating system that I had never used before. What I should have done was done some test installations on VMWare instances on my old server.
Java
The simulations are optimization and testing of a live/ real time system that runs elsewhere, ie not on this particular server. The simulations are far more computer intensive that the live system. The original system that I created depended on a Java API. There were no other options at the time. As a result the software that I have written has remained in Java. As time has gone on we have moved away from the original API and now we primarily use QuickFIX/J. Another Java API. QuickFIX has other APIs but considering how far I had come with the software already written in Java it seemed like it would take too much effort on my part to rework everything into another language like C++. I picked the Oracle JRE as I have had some trouble in the past with the ICEDTEA version.
Unity-2d
Unity itself is a controversial window manager, Ubuntu created it as an alternative to Gnome3. As a change from Gnome2 the previous default window manager its pretty drastic, and there are many people left feeling that the choices that they used to have with Linux are disappearing in a world of constrained window managers. To be honest I do not agree, Ubuntu is aimed at the entire desktop market, their goal is to create an easy to use Linux desktop (or laptop) that you don't have to be a Linux guru to understand. There are options if you want them chose something else. I digress, I chose Unity-2d as there is only a standard graphics card in the server and I really don't need the full version. I believe this was a mistake. I should have opted for something even more lightweight and simple. I am not sure whether this will cause me any problems but I could certainly have used something else. I did however have to chose something. As I said the application that I will be using is controlled by a GUI written in Java, I therefore must have X and a window manager.
My major annoyance with unity is that when I have many windows open I just want a regular taskbar. The unity panel is annoying and can really slow me down. Simple solution to this was using gnome-panel. I now have a taskbar at the bottom which makes life much easier switching between running applications. There was another options tint2 but I prefered the more simple UI of gnome-panel.
For those of you wanting to know more about configuring unity in general have a look here. And more on using unity's features here.
Everything is working fine now as far as the window manager is concerned. I still have my doubts though, it is possible that unity is slowing things down a little. Possibly there is no escape while I need a GUI I must use something and this might be just as good or bad as any.
Eclipse
I use eclipse for my Java coding, so it is useful to have it available should I need to do something directly on the server. I don't envisage needing it very often at all but better to have it available just incase.
Webmin
I love Webmin, it makes many sysadmin tasks very easy. Additionally I have made it available over the internet so that I can view it from my office. I especially like if for configuring the firewall. Iptables can be a bit fiddly and Webmin makes life much easier.
FreeNX
I am using my FreeNX a free port of NoMachine NX server for my remote desktop session. The advantage of this compared to exporting the display is that it is easy to keep the current session alive, like most remote desktop software. I have had trouble using VNC on Linux in the past and I had heard about FreeNX before. Having searched around the internet I found that this was recommended. An additional bonus is that it opens a separate session to that which is viewable directly on the server. Instructions for Ubuntu installation can be found here. I have not been able to set it up avaiable over the web on a browser but there are instructions here. So far so good, configuration was easy and the NoMachine NX client for windows connects, disconnects and reconnects to existing sessions with no problems. The interface is nice and fast over my Internet connection and so far I am happy with the results. I can use my software in a nice full screen GUI over the Internet as if I was sat in front of the server myself.
Thats my setup. I will follow this post up with any gripes and problems that I have with my system as I begin to put it through its paces. Let me know if you have any questions about what I did what I installed and if you have problems with any of these bits of software let me know, maybe I can help.
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