1. New Virtualization Host
Now that we are using KernelVirtualMachine, getting systems into use without weeks or months of delay is finally feasible. We're making good strides toward getting rid of mire, and now the time has come to allow deleuze to retire as well. Unfortunately, fritz is effectively at capacity with the web server and member shell vms, so we need a new machine.
The immediate uses for the new machine:
- Base system as secondary KDC and openafs file server (probably a good idea to split user and mail volumes across the machines)
- VM for misc services and admin tasks (dns, domtool-server, the place where admins build software)
- VM for mail services
- Probably migrate navajos over to the new machine to make fritz less cramped
We then need it to support at least two more reasonably powered virtual machines so that we can smoothly upgrade to Debian wheezy.
2. Backup Drives
As feared, it turns out that we cannot do an afs volume dump to the afs volume partition of the fileserver without grinding hcoop to a halt. ClintonEbadi's early test resulted in fritz thrashing itself into oblivion, and the entire site losing access to the fileserver (never fear! services recovered flawlessly on their own mere minutes after killing the dump). Neither deleuze nor mire nor hopper have the free space required for backing up all of the data we have in afs now, never mind future data. The new server is at least a month and a half away, and we really need backups to have not stopped working six months ago.
Thus: we need a pair of drives for a third RAID1 on fritz, dedicated to backups. We have nearly 200G in data that needs backing up now, so 500G is the absolute minimum. However, much larger drives are not much more expensive and it's not unrealistic that we would have well over 500G of data in need of backing up 18 months from now (inserting new stuff at the data center is a pain).
Alternatively, we could put these drives into the new machine.
2.1. Drive Options
We have a single hot swap caddy on hand because of the failed drive. We need a single 3.5" caddy for the PowerEdge 2970.
RichardDarst claims that we actually have two extra caddies, possibly in the rack, purchased with the initial pair of drives for openafs. @sig@
If we installed the drives when installing the new systems, we could come with extra caddies for the new machine and decided which machine to put the drives in at that time (if we have caddies, probably fritz, otherwise...).