FreeSide On The Web

So, FreeSide is nice and clean (Thanks to M Bell for sorting cleaners and such :))

Most of the servers are back online, but Eye has a new home

Hidden server is hidden

As many of you will probably know, the Department and the Robert Blackburn building are undergoing refurbishment, and therefore access is restricted

Some electrical work needed to be done, therefore power was lost to FreeSide on friday afternoon. I was the first avaliable admin to be able to get in today to get it all back online

I was greeted by a pigeon inside today (see pictures), and then a very different looking FreeSide from that of when i last saw it.

Some servers were already online, but the key server for our external access - M25 wasnt (probably a job for later, is to get this to automatically reboot if possible)

Bit of fiddling and poking, and the majority are online again. Notable exceptions are eye and bladeswitch, which had been unplugged and moved. Chances are they’ll get moved again, and being none crucial, i left them.

I couldnt actually find Gaia, it was at the other side of the room, and had been unplugged and moved, meaning our logging server is now offline for a bit. Not to us - MOAR LABELLING. It was one of the old fenner beige boxes, i think i knew which it was, but access to power cables and such, it wouldnt have been easy to get it online again

We’ve got some huge-ass cables not going over a gantry in the roof, and it would seem, some new lighting, which is nice

Get back home again and the website are down. Quick look seems that the webserver twins must’ve booted before mnemosyne had finished and the WWW directories hadnt been mounted. Quick restart, and still no websites. Buggar. Cause was Switchblade - Perlbal wasnt running on it

Over the last couple of years,  FreeSide has grown substantially both in production machines as well as the amount of consumed space. Also, by adding and removing servers and terminals over that time, the network (and the room) has become a bit of a mess both physically and systems wise.

As such, Reboot!, the total FreeSide rebuild “event” will be taking place in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, this will cause some major downtime over the space of a few days (probably a weekend), while we rebuild each server system and tweak server hardware to be more efficient, add new (and some improved) services and sort the general infrastructure of the room using the new server/network racks.

Anybody who is part of FreeSide is welcome to help out (http://www.freeside.co.uk/content/join), however, keep in mind that there is limited space in the room as it is, let alone with  lot of people shifting things around, so if you would like to help out, pass us an email to admins[-at-]freeside.co.uk to say, and we will see what can be arranged.

The day should be quite fun, but there is a lot of work to be done. This will be good experience for anybody who enjoys (or has an interest in) Linux servers, network infrastructureand generally how things fit together.

See http://wiki.freeside.co.uk/index.php/Reboot!_2008 for more information on what specific changes we will be making to FreeSide.

 Reboot! is now taking place this weekend (weekend starting 11th April), we will be meeting in the Sun Cafe down Cottingham Road at 10am, have a coffee and head in to get started.

From my last post, you will know we gained some SpiderPort Atoms which we intend to roll out as soon as possible. However these spider ports run on 10BaseT network connections, which is to slow to use them as part of the network backbone. So, we’ve decided to add a second network card in each server and use that for the SpiderPort.

Unfortunately, our spare network cards are not always that reliable and as such, it may take time to get each server back up and running. Service will therefore be somewhat sporadic, to keep up with what servers are up and which are down, check out our Twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/freeside.