THN Server 5, coming soon

[Ronin Storm]

This news brought to you by the letters N and X and the number 320...

THN Server 4 is dead, long live THN Server 5!

Our contract with ValueServer for Serenity is now done and finished. Too many problems, too much downtime, and a total lack of wish to travel to Germany to sit at the console and figure it out. Poor ol' Serenity.

Well, not worry. THN Server 5 will be coming our way soon courtesy of Haven's scrounging and parts he already had in stock here and there. Here's the spec at last count:

1U Rackmount chassis
2 x 320 GB SATA2 drives (16MB cache)
1 x Athlon64 3500 (512KB lvl2 cache)
2 x 1GB DDR 400 modules
1 x GeForce2 Ultra AGP card
1 x MSI K8N Neo2 motherboard.

See that... 2 GB of RAM, 320 GB of hard drive space, and a half decent CPU and motherboard to plant 'em in! (Yeah, I know it says 2x 320 GB... I believe some mirroring or something is planned).

Unfortunately, one of the pair of the hard drives is a DOA and currently undergoing RMA. Once that's done the server will be winging its way to the sunny south to a new colocation contract with, I believe, 49pence.

Final pricing and such is yet to be finalised, but may actually prove to be cheaper than our current contract (if we manage the cheap option, it'll be around £46 per month, or roughly €68).

Hopefully we should be up and running again with Server 5 sometime in September... which end of September will very much depend on the speed of the RMA and Haven's available time when that drive makes it back to him.

More when I know more.

 

[lt.kirby]

so what does this mean in battlefield 2 terms???

 

[DeZmond]

It'll run faster. Much faster.

The advantage of the new server as well is that as well as allowing us to do more with it it's a fresh install, which is blissful from an administration point of view and reduces the chances of any dependancy entanglement. For now.

 

[Nanor]

Are we still going to call it serenity?

Can't we hold a competition, and whoever wins get's the server named after them?

 

[DeZmond]

That would break the current convention of servers being named after cool spaceships. Serenity, Saratoga, Nostromo...I reckon the Von Braun would go down quite well with the SS2 fans . If I remember correctly the last time this subject came up haven had an idea of what he wanted to call the next server anyway... ?

 

[Ronin Storm]

This server will be named using Haven's choice, as far as I'm concerned. He built it, he paid for the hardware, he gets to choose, if he wishes.

 

[Haven]

There will still be an alias pointing serenity at whatever the new server is called (probably promethius) so you'll still be able to access it as serenity.thehavennet.org.uk to avoid confusion for older users.

However once the name is finalised I'll go through the FAQ and update it so that new users get used to using its proper name

Unfortunately serenity is dead and whilst we had some good usage it was ultimately a mess towards the end so we'll start annew with a new name and a new system and hopefully none of the problems we had previously.

 

[pHatBambi]

Are we fighting for the amount we have to pay Valueserver?

I think that we should try to do something as the service was very poor quality for the last 2 months use?

Do we have any arguement or not? I don't know the terms of the contract.

Just thinking about funds really.

 

[SgtFury]

Ignore that fund thing at the mo its all in a bit of a state at the mo and we are sorting out where we are with it.

 

[Haven]

Enough of the issues were either human error on our part or unknown causes (we had a major software failure which started the whole mess in the first place and was probably an issue with a shadow passwd update that was released by gentoo).

Added to the fact that on the whole valueserver were very good to us and no I don't think we'll be asking for anything back.

 

[pHatBambi]

Added to the fact that on the whole valueserver were very good to us and no I don't think we'll be asking for anything back.

Cool. I just wasn't sure of the situation that's all.

 

[Birdy]

TBH i think theres allways issues watever you do and we are lucky to have the site!

Its a fact of life!!

I am excited about the new server! should be nice to have everything up but no rush! its nice to have suspense!!

wen funds are set myself and thatbloke will do a monthly thing as by then our wages and bills will be sorted!

 

[Fuzzy Bunny]

The server comes equipped with DDR! Hurray!

 

[SgtFury]

Donations Update

Right the total in the box now is 392.32 Euros. This is how much money we have in the funds taking into account the last payment to Valueserve that we need to do.

By Haven and I's calculations that means we are all square with them and this can all go on towards Server 5.

 

[thatbloke]

Donations Update

Right the total in the box now is 392.32 Euros. This is how much money we have in the funds taking into account the last payment to Valueserve that we need to do.

By Haven and I's calculations that means we are all square with them and this can all go on towards Server 5.

May I suggest that some or all of this goes towards paying for the hardware for the new server?

I think it make the burden on Haven's pocket a bit lighter... unless this is already the plan?

Would anyone have any objections to this?

 

[Ronin Storm]

Would anyone have any objections to this?

Only one objection. We've been repeatedly light on server funds since March/April this year, despite pleas and cajoling and so on. This pool is an excellent pool to keep a new server running for maybe six months (depending entirely on final per month colo costs) without requiring serious contributions from the community.

As Haven owns the server already, and Haven will be liable for the colo costs if THN can't pay due to insufficient donations, taking money upfront may actually just be taking from the left hand to give to the right...

 

[elDiablo]

Out of interest, would adding some more RAM make much of a difference? I have some spare sticks around, which I'm more then happy to donate to the cause! I'll talk properly about this in a week, when I get back.

 

[Pestcontrol]

More memory never hurts i suppose, however for an Athlon 64 more than 2 sticks require you to use somewhat slower timings.