{"id":1532,"date":"2016-11-14T22:30:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T02:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=1532"},"modified":"2016-11-14T13:42:23","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T17:42:23","slug":"server-upgrade-part-1-the-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2016\/server-upgrade-part-1-the-build\/","title":{"rendered":"Server Upgrade: Part 1 – the build"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"new-server-parts\"<\/p>\n

I’ve been on and off for nearly 2 years talking about getting new hardware for the server that runs lowtek.ca<\/a>. The current server is a modest Atom<\/a> based board with only 2GB of RAM, I’m pretty sure my phone has more compute power. My reasons for upgrading were mostly so I could move over to using a Docker<\/a> based deployment, having done a bunch of Docker things for work – I’ve really gotten to like it for managing software stacks. The Atom chip doesn’t support some of the virtualization that is needed, heck – it’s also a 32bit system only. Stalling on buying new hardware wasn’t all that hard, there was always other priorities. Then I discovered the current server was put together 7 years ago<\/a>! Worse, the IDE drive that is the boot volume is older than that.. Clearly I have a ticking time bomb for a server.<\/p>\n

I wanted to get a skylake<\/a> processor, but was happy to stick with an entry level Pentium – it will let me run all the software I care about and while it’s not the fastest, it will be much much faster than the Atom. I wanted 4 RAM slots on the motherboard, I figure 16GB now – with the potential to double that later. I also needed 6 SATA\u00a0ports (Raid 5 + boot drive), and if I need to get more I’ll buy a PCIe SATA\u00a0extension port<\/a>. I went ASUS based on their durability reputation. I picked up a new power supply (because who wants to trust one that is already 7 years old), and a cheap SSD drive which will be much more reliable than any spinning platter.<\/p>\n