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“it is better to solve the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way”.
Server farm is a set of Unix servers with the same OS but different hardware a hardware configurations. Server farm consists of groups of almost identical hardware-wise computers that can be managed simultaneously as they have mostly identical configuration files. Such a group should be viewed as a class and individual servers as instances of this class.
Over the course of several years of deploying, reworking, and administering such farms (mainly Linux and Solaris), we developed a certain methodology and toolset. We began thinking of an entire farm similar to one high performance cluster, rather than as a collection of individual hosts. This change of perspective, and the decisions it invoked, made a world of difference in cost and ease of administration. The standard functionality includes:
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There is relatively little prior art in print which addresses the problems of server farms. There really is no "standard" way to assemble or manage such server farms.
Because infrastructures are usually ad hoc, setting up a new infrastructure or attempting to harness an existing unruly infrastructure can be bewildering for new sysadmins. At the same time large part of knowledge that exist for HPC cluster apples and the sequence of steps needed to develop such "class-based" infrastructure is relatively straightforward; the discovery of that sequence can be time-consuming and fraught with error. Moreover, mistakes made in the early stages of setup or migration can be difficult to remove for the lifetime of the infrastructure.
We will discuss the sequence that we developed and offer a brief glimpse into a few of the many tools and techniques this perspective generated. Typical problems that need to at least partially solved include:
Complete network, host and application documentation is must for every site.
If an admin is constantly called while on vacation or while others are on call
is probably not documenting their systems properly. Everything needed to understand
and fix problems at their site should be clearly documented in a central location.
The systems should be as self-documenting as possible. This means that start/stop/reload scripts should be in conventional locations (like /etc/init.d/ on SysV and on most Linuxes), MOTD messages should give helpful info, scripts should have comments explaining their usage and purpose, and automated alerts should send useful information about the error condition(s) found. Leave nothing to be rediscovered every time someone new has to work on the systems, let them spend their time working on the actual issue(s) at hand.
An admin unfamiliar with the machine(s) in question should be able to find their way around the system with a minimum of trouble.
Many admins become mired in their site's problems, and stop trying to improve their situation. They accept that their disks keep filling up, that their applications keep dying, and that mundane tasks take up all their time.
If they were to write cron jobs to trim files that grow until filesystems fill, restart dead applications with init or cfengine or cron scripts or daemontools, and automate repetitive tasks from cron or cfengine, they would have a smooth running network. Once things run smoothly, they can spend their time updating software, improving security, or any of the many projects that improve overall conditions. Such projects get little effort spent on them at sites without a proactive attitude.
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Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
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Last modified: March 12, 2019
