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2016 Budget (10% pledged)

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Post by Admin Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:00 pm

The year is 2016, and things are looking bright.
I have a job, randi has a job, and as always, the server demands more money X_X

As of now, our issues entail failing fans, storage that is rapidly running out, no backup media (if the hard drive dies, everything is lost) and unreliable network equipment. Short power outages also plauge my house, and this seems to be the cause for some of the shutdowns we have been experience. A UPS would solve this issue. This topic is to discuss a budget for this year that seems reasonable for everyone in order to upgrade and/or fix our current dilemma.

The server can only handle 1 transcode stream at a time. This usually isn't an issue because most of the time when you guys stream anime it is direct stream and requires little cpu power. But when anyone streams to an under powered device like android or a console, it has to transcode. This is all fine and good, but we also have a minecraft server running. Minecraft servers (with mods) are cpu and ram hogs. The server has plenty of ram, but the cpu is aging. A complete rebuild of the server would be expensive, but would allow us to run multiple minecraft servers at once, anot not have to worry about things crashing as much. Most of the crashes as of late are caused from the computer being too overloaded, or the minecraft server itself dying. Overhauling the hardware in the server could cost between 500 and 2000 dollars depending on how far we go with it. If there is interest to go into this direction, I can break a more detailed budget out. We could also build the old server parts into a gaming rig and either give it to someone in our group who needs it, or sell it as a gaming rig to recoup some of the costs.

This brings me to my next big topic; we need to get more reliable networking hardware. I can get an industrial grade networking switch on ebay used for around 50 bucks, so that is not a huge deal.

Fans:
The server needs new fans. They are unreliable and are wearing out. A fan controller would be good too. This is necessary to happen soon, lest the fans die and the system overheats and fries. This should cost around 30 for cans, and 20 for a fan controller.

Storage:
The server only has around 80gb of space remaining. It has room for a ton of new drives. We can load as much storage as we want into it, but I would like to get at lease one more 2tb drive. This is the bare minimum. 2th drives generally go for around 75 for a drive that would perform well enough for the server.

UPS:
Our last item to discuss is purchasing a UPS, or uninteruptable power supply, is a big battery that provides power tot he devices plugged in in the case of a power outage, for about 3-5 minutes. Long enough for the server to shut all the services down and power down normally. This would prevent data loss due to power loss in minecraft worlds and generally extend the life of the server parts. These are however, spendy. In the ballpark of 250 dollars or so.


So those are the topics that need evaluation.
I am going to put in at least 10% of the total budget we decide on, you guys can decide how much you want to pledge after we decide on what is worth getting.

Admin
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Post by wingsprinter Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:48 pm

I'd gladly put money in if I had any :c
All of my money right now goes to food

wingsprinter

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Post by AtomicFish Mon Feb 08, 2016 3:04 pm

I'm in a similar boat as Emily; I have money, but I need it for this and next term's gas money.

That said, I can probably spare $20, so that will help with the fans at least.

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Post by Sir Snagglepuss Mon Feb 08, 2016 4:17 pm

I can donate quite a bit but I will need some time to put it aside. I'll probably try and cover what everyone else cant, but dont expect too much.

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Post by Admin Mon Feb 08, 2016 4:18 pm

Alright, well we need to decide on what is worth doing first.
So what of that list do people think is worth doing?

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Post by AtomicFish Tue Feb 09, 2016 7:11 pm

You said the fans are the most immediate concern, right? They're also the cheapest, so I say that should be first.

It's sort of a toss-up between the new hard drive and the UPS, though.

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Post by Worganas Tue Feb 09, 2016 11:01 pm

With tax returns coming in I'll gladly put some money in. I think it would be worth it to fully upgrade/rebuild the server if that's what everyone else wants to do. Mostly cause minecraft for me lol.
Also, I definitely think the fans should be first. And I also don't know for sure between a UPS and a new hard drive. How much new stuff are you wanting to put on the server and how much space will that take?

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Post by Admin Tue Feb 09, 2016 11:19 pm

I agree, the fans are the most pressing matter right now.
so fans are estimated to be around 50 for fans and a controller

I think the storage is is more important than the UPS, but both are important.
So if we budget for both a new hard drive (which I really would like to get 3 more and run a raid so we have data integrity) and a ups, the question is can we achieve that.

Prices by order of importance:

Fans: 50$
New hard drive: 75$
UPS: 250$
_________________
375


Or:

Fans: 50$
New hard drive ARRAY: 225$
UPS: 250$
_________________
525


If I rebuild the server I will need to buy _ALL_ new hardware other than the hard drives. I will likely also be moving to linux if we do this because there isn't anything that cant run on linux that runs on the server really. Plus linux is easier to work on and is more stable.

If I rebuild, it will be a dual-Xenon CPU build with 32gb ram.
that will cost around 2000 or so
so yea. Also, no water cooling this time. Just a bunch of headaches there.

If we want to start saving toward that then we could do that.

But yea, it would seem that randi, david and I are the only ones who can afford to put money toward this right now, save for austin's 20 dollars. So the question is do we want to get the disk array right now.

That 's the difference between us each paying 119 vs us each paying 169, assuming we can each handle that.

Let me know what you guys think.

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Post by Admin Tue Feb 09, 2016 11:27 pm

Worganas wrote:With tax returns coming in I'll gladly put some money in. I think it would be worth it to fully upgrade/rebuild the server if that's what everyone else wants to do. Mostly cause minecraft for me lol.
Also, I definitely think the fans should be first. And I also don't know for sure between a UPS and a new hard drive. How much new stuff are you wanting to put on the server and how much space will that take?

The new space is mostly for anime. The more space we have the more HD encodes and blu-ray rips i can put on there. As it stands we now have 70gb remaining.
If we rebuilt the server, we could easily run multiple plex streams and 3+ minecraft servers simultaneously. That being said, it would also likely triple the energy costs, which are already around 20 dollars a month. In any case, we can cross that bridge when we get there.

Another option if we rebuild is to use unRAID (a linux operating system) to virtualize several servers on the one box and allocate system resources to each one. You can assign a specific number of cpu cores and ram to each server and even have them all share one hard drive. This would allow for a dedicated minecraft server, and a dedicated PLEX server on one machine (and potentially other dedicated servers).

Rebuilding is something I really want to do eventually. I really regret going the cheaper "make a desktop with high end parts into a server" route, because it is so less-than-full-featured, and I really regret going with AMD. I once had high hopes for AMD, but they're just sliding down a slippery slope to nowhere.

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Post by Admin Wed Feb 10, 2016 9:33 pm

Good news everyone.
2016 Budget (10% pledged) Futurama-good-news-gif
I've found a UPS from frys that would meet our needs and is only 140!

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Post by Admin Wed Feb 10, 2016 9:34 pm


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