pelligrini
5th March 2008, 15:31
ExtremeOverclocking is asking for donations to buy a server for stats processing.
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/
I realize this post might be a little long, but please read all of it so you know a little background and can understand what's at stake.
Lately I've been getting more and more questions and requests from people whom I don't process stats for (because their rank is below the cutoff). It would be nice if I could process everyone's stats but the amount of processing on my server prohibits it. As a matter of fact the current load is getting rather intense and lengthy, and has been putting quite a strain on the main EOC site & forums during updates.
I've been slowly working on the next major overhaul of the stats, most of it is backend changes, but there are a few visual tweaks to the pages. One thing I decided to do was process the stats on a local development server in my office, which would in turn upload the DB changes to the main site which would only take a couple minutes at most to update. This would aleviate a lot of the load from my web server that has been causing the sites to bog down, and give the ability to speed up processing the FAH stats.
I considered just upgrading my server package at my hosting company and moving all the sites over, but to be honest that is a major pain and a major undertaking. Not to mention the increased montly costs would double what I'm currently paying, and the additional computing requirement is really only needed in bursts so all that extra power would be sitting idle most of the time. So instead of spending all this extra money each month I figured it would be more cost-effective to buy a new server that can sit here in my office and would just be a one-time expense and a lot cheaper in the long run.
While my development server here is decent (just an A64 3200+ w/2GB RAM), I haven't loaded all the old fah data yet to see how long it will take to process regular updates. But I'm not expecting to see any huge gain and it might even take longer. So before making the official switchover I would like get a halfway decent Intel server with one or preferably two quad-core processors, at least 4GB of RAM, and preferably the fastest hard drives possible (10K or 15K drives in a RAID 1 or 10 configuration). The beauty of the stats is that processing teams can be in parallel, greatly reducing the overall processing time as long as you don't have any big bottlenecks.
I did some quick browsing at the Dell website looking at some of the poweredge servers, and while they have some that cost more than a car, I think a more realistic system can be built for $1,500 - $2,000 USD.
So now if you read this far, here's my plea to you. I would *really* appreciate some donations to help fund this new server. The easiest and preferred way would be to use PayPal (there is a link on the left sidebar).
If nobody bothers to donate then I guess you guys will just have to live with whatever speed the stats process at. I probably won't be able to do any expansion on the teams / individuals being processed, and might even have to reduce the numbers back down to what they were before.
3/5/08 Update: Since posting this yesterday afternoon, already several people have sent in a total of $100 USD. Thanks Guys!
http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/
I realize this post might be a little long, but please read all of it so you know a little background and can understand what's at stake.
Lately I've been getting more and more questions and requests from people whom I don't process stats for (because their rank is below the cutoff). It would be nice if I could process everyone's stats but the amount of processing on my server prohibits it. As a matter of fact the current load is getting rather intense and lengthy, and has been putting quite a strain on the main EOC site & forums during updates.
I've been slowly working on the next major overhaul of the stats, most of it is backend changes, but there are a few visual tweaks to the pages. One thing I decided to do was process the stats on a local development server in my office, which would in turn upload the DB changes to the main site which would only take a couple minutes at most to update. This would aleviate a lot of the load from my web server that has been causing the sites to bog down, and give the ability to speed up processing the FAH stats.
I considered just upgrading my server package at my hosting company and moving all the sites over, but to be honest that is a major pain and a major undertaking. Not to mention the increased montly costs would double what I'm currently paying, and the additional computing requirement is really only needed in bursts so all that extra power would be sitting idle most of the time. So instead of spending all this extra money each month I figured it would be more cost-effective to buy a new server that can sit here in my office and would just be a one-time expense and a lot cheaper in the long run.
While my development server here is decent (just an A64 3200+ w/2GB RAM), I haven't loaded all the old fah data yet to see how long it will take to process regular updates. But I'm not expecting to see any huge gain and it might even take longer. So before making the official switchover I would like get a halfway decent Intel server with one or preferably two quad-core processors, at least 4GB of RAM, and preferably the fastest hard drives possible (10K or 15K drives in a RAID 1 or 10 configuration). The beauty of the stats is that processing teams can be in parallel, greatly reducing the overall processing time as long as you don't have any big bottlenecks.
I did some quick browsing at the Dell website looking at some of the poweredge servers, and while they have some that cost more than a car, I think a more realistic system can be built for $1,500 - $2,000 USD.
So now if you read this far, here's my plea to you. I would *really* appreciate some donations to help fund this new server. The easiest and preferred way would be to use PayPal (there is a link on the left sidebar).
If nobody bothers to donate then I guess you guys will just have to live with whatever speed the stats process at. I probably won't be able to do any expansion on the teams / individuals being processed, and might even have to reduce the numbers back down to what they were before.
3/5/08 Update: Since posting this yesterday afternoon, already several people have sent in a total of $100 USD. Thanks Guys!