There are rumors going around that ThePlanet is in acquisition talks with Softlayer. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this.

Stay tuned!

Howdy!

The above error can come up quite often on a busy database-driven website or it could happen at one time or the other for different reasons. Today, we are going to cover the main two reasons for it happening. I shall break this down by architecture.

The Out of memory error indicates that the whole system has run out of memory at that point in time. For example, I happened to be loading a customer’s database that required more than 4GB of free RAM on the system. The system had 2GB of free RAM to work with so the MySQL process failed to import the database due to a lack of memory. The solution here is to add more memory into the system.

Here, the error indicates that either the system ran out of memory, just like in x86_64 above, or that the process cannot address more memory even if it is available. This is more peculiar to the architecture than it is a shortcoming of MySQL. 32-bit operating systems are not capable of letting a process address more than roughly 4GB of memory. The best approach here is to install a 64-bit OS that is capable of addressing that much RAM.

Keep in mind that UNIXy fully manages its customers’ servers. Should this particular problem occur while assisting a customer, we are always more than happy to provide a complimentary memory upgrade to complete the task.

That’s all folks!

This error is not specific to Litespeed but can be encountered while building PHP with MySQL support on 64-bit systems. The fix is to tell the build that the MySQL client is indeed installed, but in a different directory, by adding the following flag to the configure line in Litespeed:

--with-libdir=lib64

The reason being the build doesn’t know at this point that it is dealing with a 64-bit OS. If adding the above switch does not work, be sure to install the MySQL client and libraries.

That’s all folks!

There are many types of clusters. The one I am going to cover in this post is a Web cluster. In other words, it is a cluster of several servers built to serve Web pages. It is a made up of Web servers, database servers, and file servers. You may ask, why not deploy only one server and install the Web, database, and file server? There comes a time when one single server cannot sustain the increase in traffic. The high number of visitors exceeds the capacity of the server. Be it processor power, memory availability, disk IOPS, or network IO.

Cluster

Building clusters is not for everyone. It is a complex engineering task. The complexity resides in making the whole, called cluster, accomplish the tasks efficiently and seamlessly. It becomes even more complex when one implements load balancing and database replication. Load balancing is the act of distributing tasks across two or more server with identical configurations. Database replication is the synchronization of database tables and meta data across two or more servers. Having two identical databases scales out well especially when it has been designated as the bottleneck.

Advanced Cluster

Too often I get asked, why not deploy a monster server with 32 cores and 64GB of memory instead of building a cluster? While such server might or might not sustain the traffic, there are many points that need to be thought out. The truth is such monster server is cost prohibitive. The price to value is too high and not worth it. The reason being there is currently no commodity server that can handle 32 cores. One would need a considerable budget. For much less, one can get a 32-core cluster. The other point to consider is the fact that the motherboard bus will not be able to sustain the throughput required for a high traffic server. It will not be able to seamlessly pull 64GB/s in and out of the memory system.

Another important point is disaster recovery, one would need another equally powerful server or a very aggressive (read extremely expensive) part-replacement contract. On the other hand, commodity hardware is so affordable one could keep a few spares without breaking the bank! Plus, a monster server will never handle Digg or Slashdot effects. The cluster, however, can scale to accommodate for traffic spikes.

Keep in mind that UNIXy builds clusters for current customers free of charge. The support and service is included with your purchased dedicated servers. Contact us today and we will go above and beyond to help out.

That’s all folks!

There are a few server-grade processors in the market. The well-know ones are Intel Xeon, AMD Opteron, Intel Itanium, and Sparc. Core2Quad and Phenom are, for example, desktop CPUs. There is confusion as to what makes a server-type CPU different from a desktop counterpart. Besides the bus speed improvement, there is a fundamental difference that proves to be important especially if there is a lot at stake. At UNIXy, all servers we promote to production are either Intel Xeon or AMD Opteron processors. We have to offer the best quality components to our customers.

Before we delve into the main differences, there is one element that makes server processors stand out from the rest: validation. It is about the effort spent validating processors that differentiates desktop from server CPUs. As an analogy, it makes perfect sense that a passenger aircraft engine would require much more stringent validation than a car engine. The risk is undoubtedly higher for an aircraft engine. The same applies to server processors. A desktop processor is designed to cater to the needs of one person. On the other hand, there is much more at stake with a server processor!

Let us cover each point one by one.

Validation

Server processors are put through all kinds of tests under stressful conditions such as higher temperatures, strict environmental conditions, and high computing loads. The time spent performing these tests increases the costs and time to delivery considerably.

Dependable

Server processors are designed for reliability. For example, if your desktop processor were to somehow fail, the whole workstation becomes inoperable. Server CPUs have the smarts to be able to failover, in the case of a dual CPU server, without having to crash or shutdown. Granted, one would have to have a dual CPU configuration. It is important to note that desktop CPUs do not support dual processor configurations.

Self Correcting

Server processors have the circuitry in place to correct memory errors that can affect stability. The technology is called Error Code Correction (ECC). Some desktop configurations are also capable of ECC but the feature is not validated as is the case with server CPUs. Hence, my stressing the importance of validation first and foremost.

Higher trafficking

Server CPUs are designed with buses that operate at much higher frequencies (bandwidth). This means that they can process more data in and out of memory and other subsystems. Heat can be a concern for these buses as it impedes the flow of electricity and hence throughput. This is why server-grade processors have their matching powerful fan blowers.

That’s all folks!