Busy as hell.. seems to be a the never ending story. Original plan for colo was teaming up with a small HFT group that would have been really cool but.. alas fell thru at the last minute, thus had to re-group both infra and strategies. So as of now im finally plugged in hooked up and almost ready to let that first strategy run loose to generate those millions of dollars ... ho ho ho ha :P
When you get ready to put servers into colo theres a sudden realization of how expensive enterprise grade name brand servers are. Typically HP G6 or G7, various flavors of IBM and occasionally a DELL shows up. Unfortunately these kinds of machines are out of my budget or more precisely I`d rather spend the money elsewhere so.... lets build are own 1U server on the cheap.
HP ProLiant DL370 G7 High Performance 2U Server
x2 6 core 3.4Ghz X5690
16GB ECC memory
5TB of disk space
Dual 10Gb Port NIC
http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/MiddleFrame.asp?view=all&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=&AirTime=False&BaseId=35620&FamilyID=3180&ProductLineID=431
For a total of $14,421.00 ..... OUCH!
Brand new h4cking NASDAQ 1U High Performance Server Model Number 1337
... lol
So whats in the box?
x1 4 Core 8 thread 3.4Ghz E3-1270 (Sandy Bridge)
16GB ECC memory
4.5TB HDD space
120GB Intel SSD
x1 SolarFlare Dual 10Gb NIC
... and yes its a tiny 1U as you can see from the $20 bill. Typically this kind of chassis is used for low end systems as the aiflow is pretty messed up ... but it fits my style, lean, mean and a hell of alot cheaper! Only major concern is airfow as cold air intake from the side and the blower pushing the air out the back (pic is a little old) yet so far no problems.
To break the costs
Motherboard is SuperMicro X9SCM-F (IPMI very important) - $200
Processor E3-1270 - $340
16 GB ECC Memory - $200
WD Green 2TB - $120
WD Green 2.5TB $120 (disk in the picture is a 1TB that was replaced)
120GB Intel SSD (thing between PSW & HDD) - $200
Chassis, imported directly from Taiwan - $100 (including shipping + PSW + Blower + Riser)
SolarFlare Dual Port 10Gb NIC - $1000
Total all up $2,280
That`s a saving of $12,000 not bad. Of course the reliability of the server, comparability, SLA is non existent, HDD are slow.. uses some "Desktop Grade" parts as well as a power supply of unknown origin. Not exactly the fairest of fair compairson to your decked out HP G7 box but spending money where it counts, CPU frez, Memory, and NIC. To sum it up nicely would be to say, if it fuck ups its your own fault and theres no support line to call/sob/pass the buck to.
All up haven`t had any problems and more than happy with the performance and yes DO NOT mess with the punk ass pink bunny!
Why is IMPI important?
ReplyDeletebecause you have no physical (or limited) access to the machine. no keyboard, no mouse, not display.
ReplyDeleteIPMI specifically Supermicro`s flavor + tools is designed for remote machine management and is actually quite good if not better than HPs lights-out
Are you in Carteret? Who are you clearing thru? Keep us posted when you go live and good luck!
ReplyDeletecarteret - yes
ReplyDeletetheres only a few brokers/clearing firms you can use for low-latency colo with < $1MM risk deposit.. i can name them with one hand... so its one of them :)
I buy/sell the named ProLiant model with that spec for ~$7k... I still think there's value in the enterprise gear.
ReplyDeleteValue in enterprise gear, totally. On a tight budget and $5k extra worth the risk of a component failure?
ReplyDeletethis is trading after all.. who knows what happens in 6months.
I was in the same boat once upon a time. I didn't have the money for HP or IBM gear and I went a similar route and while it worked it wasn't as good as my second attempt. What works a lot better is if you spend a little extra money, get a raid card, get a supermicro board with IPMI as someone else suggested, get redundant power supplies. With that you'll have a machine that has very little risk of going down, you'll always be able to get into it and you'll probably only add another $1k to the cost. Do you really need SolarFlare or would Intel work just as well for less? Why do you need SSD at all? If you need low latency you won't do much logging at all and if you do logging you can do it in big writes from a second process.
ReplyDeletethanks for the comments to anser
ReplyDelete1) the server is SuperMicro with IPMI.
2) component with highest probability of failure is the power supply. wish there was a backup but alas.
3) SolarFlare absolutely. For 10Gb as well as the software interface into the card (will write that up in some other post)
4) SSD is needed for 10Gb 100% packet capture. If i spend cash on a nice RAID card that would also work but prefered the SSD (more on that some other post too)
5) low latency dosent mean no logging.... just no printf`s in your latency critical code/core/thread path
"
Delete5) low latency dosent mean no logging.... just no printf`s in your latency critical code/core/thread path
"
What do you think about this solution?
http://lwn.net/Articles/272534/
http://lwn.net/Articles/273030/
I wrote earlier about the HP equipment. And yes, SolarFlare makes sense. Care to write about OpenOnload versus Myricom DBL? :) We should team-up. Looking for any hardware connections and system tuning tips?
ReplyDeletehit me up hacking.nasdaq@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteas for OpenOnload vs Myricom its hard, dont have a mellonx card so.... if anyone wants to donate one free free lol.
Been meaning to write about SolarFlare just not had enough time to write it up.
> OpenOnload vs Myricom
ReplyDeleteIntel DDIO? :)
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/direct-data-i-o.html