During the past couple of months, I've been spending a lot of time trying to find a good server to replace the existing OpenFitness.net application server. Apparently, finding a server that actually works can be difficult.
The app server that's currently working on OpenFitness.net is an athlon-based server that is a few years old. It was really built to handle the backend sales automation processes for us, and it has proven to be a very reliable system. So, I felt comfortable running OpenFitness.net on it for the short term. The only problem is, that it's a few years old, doesn't have much memory (actually only 256 MB!), and I think its hard drives are nearing the end of their useful life.
I wanted to replace it with a more upgradeable 64 bit system that would be just as reliable as the current one, but much faster. So, I started shopping around...
First Attempt
My first purchase was an intel-based system, which would work OK for a week or so...followed by memory being fried. I replaced all the memory, and after a few days, the new memory was fried. This was not cheap memory either! Of course, by the time I decided I could not trust this server at all, it was past the latest date for return it.
Second Attempt
This time, I went for a 'barebones' server, thinking maybe I can salvage some of the parts from the original server (which contained about $1k worth of brand new hard drives). This one was a Tyan-based barebones system, with a dual core Opteron and plenty of memory.
Unfortunately, when I took it out of the box, plugged it all in...NOTHING! This thing was dead before I even got my hands on it. I was not about to get stuck with another dead server, so I returned this thing for a refund right away (minus a restocking fee of course).
Last Try
I debated for a while about whether to try and resurrect the first attempt, or go for a third. After deciding once and for all that I'll never be able to sleep at night with that first server doing any work for me, I decided to order an HP ProLiant server that had pretty much the same capabilities as the Tyan (without the hot-swapping...oh well).
Here's the new server humming away in my office, waiting to go into production next week. OpenFitness.net should see a little bit of a speed improvement, as those Opterons and 10k rpm hard drives make a big difference in the database speed. Also, having quadruple the memory doesn't hurt either. I'd say we'll have that thing up to 8 Gigs of memory within the next 12 months.
