In my recent post, "What 256GB of RAM Looks Like", I showed some pictures of some RAM that Vivio had bought to put in to a couple of new platform machines. After that post I got a couple of requests to see it inside the servers that it was going to be in, so I took some pictures of one of the two new Platforms we built this month for those of you who might be interested in seeing the platform machines we use.
There are two Opteron 8-Core CPU's here, for a total of 16 CPU cores. The RAM is the same RAM that I showed in the pictures earlier. Each RAM module is 8GB, making for a total of 128GB in each of the two servers we put together this month. The CPU's and RAM are cooled using passive cooling and a fan "funnel" (at least I think that's what it's called) in which 4 separate fans drive air through the funnel.
This platform will be named "Arcticwolf" - which indicates this particular server will be used for Windows VPS Accounts. It will contain 16 Seagate Constallation SAS drives (14 usable and 2 spare). The amount of drive space we will be providing by default in new VPS Accounts will increase (a great deal) in the not too distant future as the price of exceptional drive arrays like this one goes down.
The system comes complete with redundant PSU's, so if one of them fails, we can replace it without needing to shut the machine down.
Personally, I think these servers are just plain awesome in carnate, but that's probably just my predjudice talking. ;)
Just recently I found myself needing to verify if a server I was working on - which required image manipulation - was actually running in headless mode. On Linux servers, graphical user interfaces (GUI's) aren't usually running because they take up additional resources (like memory) and server administrators usually want to give all the resources they can to actual server processes rather then a GUI which they only use occasionally. However, the JRE that ColdFusion engines run on needs the window processing engines in order to perform graphic manipulation - image resizing, rotating, etc - all require image processing libraries.
The following code bit allows you to see if your CFML engine (Railo, OpenBD, or ACF) is actually running in headless mode. This is useful if you're debugging a pesky image processing problem and you want to make sure your JRE's access to the XORG libraries aren't the problem.
Vivio buys a lot of RAM. I mean a LOT of RAM. We like the Kingston brand, as they tend to be reliable and function well for a very long time.
Vivio is currently working on building another platform server, so I thought it might be interesting to create a post showing the massive amounts of memory that we put into these things. Here are a couple pictures of the RAM we got for just ONE of our platform boxes. These are the boxes that we split up into VPS accounts.
This last one shows the model number, which, for those who are interested, is this:
Thunder loop credit: "Arctura" from their "Spectacular Nature" series on the Free Sound Project
Precussion uses one-shots on woods and several base drums. The instrument loops (various piano. trombone, vibraphone, french horns) were created by me using digital instruments and various effects. I use one ambient synth generated from the "Morphine" VST (you hear it clearly at the end).
I've experenced this problem many times on both Ubuntu and Linux Mint, and I've had to go research this problem several times each time I encountered it. (I can never remember where to find it.) So, I'm writing it down here in case I ever need it again, or perhaps someone else out on the Net is experiencing this same issue and hasn't figured out how to fix it.
The problem is that whenever I used SSH to get a remote terminal to another computer, I would occasionally get a long delay before SSH would prompt me for a password. Once I logged in, the connection was very fast, so I knew it wasn't a network problem. It had to be something related to the servers I was connecting to. This perplexed me for a long time.
After much research, I came across this post, by a fellow with the username "gpowers01", right close to the bottom:
So... I tried it. I added the following line to my local /etc/ssh/ssh_config file:
GSSAPIAuthentication no
... and VIOLA! No more stinking pause. Thank you "gpowers01"!
For the record, I did try the SSH DNS thing that's mentioned in the post too, but that's never worked for me. Maybe it's because my NAT doesn't suck, but the GSSAPI thing works for me every single time.
So... the next time I go to look for this, I won't have to go any further then my own blog. And perhaps I may help someone else out too. The Interwebs are cool that way. ;)
The following code bit allows you to see if your CFML engine (Railo, OpenBD, or ACF) is actually running in headless mode. This is useful if you're debugging a pesky image processing problem and you want to make sure your JRE's access to the XORG libraries aren't the problem.
