What kind of hardware do ISPs run? What's in those 3U rack cases? [Archive]

Unregistered

08-26-2002, 07:55 PM

Can't help you with ISP but I did visit a datacenter at my friend's workplace. They managed investment accounts so the datacenter has to handle a whole lot of data going 24/365 (somebody is investing something somewhere around the world).

My friend told me that uptime & availability are, above all else, most critical. If the system is not available, heads will roll. It's that simple.

This place has standardize on IBM, HP and Compaq and have an extensive contract with all. Say what you will about cheezy Compaq you'll find at BB, but those professional level Proliants kick some major booty. The IBM looked even better.

The bigger Proliants unit come with dual redundant PSU and hot-swappable RAID5 with hot-spare HD subsystem. When one HD failed, the hot-spare takes over, and data is rebuilt onto that drive. In a 6 drives setup, you have to loose 3 drives before data loss occur. The drives themselves are 10K rpm, 18GB SCSI Seagate that's rebagged by Compaq and placed in a special tray that fit nicely in the Proliants They have stacked on these things on standby. And I was told this was just their intranet server running Lotus Domino. For backup, they use DSS tape systems.

The Proliants use Intel CPU (PIII in when I was there) exclusively. No AMD and definitely NO Cyrix! The larger units are all dual CPU setup. As for memory, they just pretty much maxed it out from the factory. Since they have contracts with these companies, if anything goes worng, a tech would come by to service them, so installing your own memory isn't a good idea since the tech could blame the problem on bad memory you installed.

As for speed, they standardize on one setup (PIII-800MHz when I visited) and don't deviate. If they need to swap, they will replace an entire Proliant with an exact model, right down to the speed of the CPU. They are rather anal about that, but if your job is on the line, you would be too.

For their webserver, they, in order to increase uptime and availability, use a rack of 1U server in a cluster, load-balance setup. I was told they had an IBM Shark SAN, but didn't see it personally.

Their backend operation uses HP Unix boxen with PA CPUs (don't remember the exact model) running HPUX. He said they are considering getting the HP Superdome.

Before they put a new server / desktop into their environment, it must pass a series of QC checks to ensure maximum compatibility. This is one of the chores that my friend does. So IBM/Compaq would send them 8-12 boxes to play. One of the cool thing they do is setup a Quake network in order to stress test the computers. I think it's a bunch of BS, but I saw Quake being played so they must have convinced some PHBs upstair.

Well, enough for today.