Server Upgrades

Hello habitué. I am the one who goes unseen, riding a Grass Mud Horse - unclean.
For many of you, those will have been the first words of mine which you have read, sorry. But enough joking around, I'm here to talk about improving the server.

The problem:
Server backups take far too long. Server files are being read from one location on the hard drive and are written to another location on that same drive. It's inefficient, and it is negatively affecting user experience.

The solution:
An SSD. Which SSD? This SSD: The Corsair Neutron GTX 120GB Solid State Drive. Now why this one? There are so many diverse products that there is no "best" SSD, but I think this is pretty close. Here's why:

Size: 120GB. While we don't need a drive this large, it is hard to find a smaller, great performing drive. It will leave room for massive expansion, at any rate.
Speed: It is ass-rippingly fast with up to 550MB/s Seqential Reads.
IOPS: What really matters with a minecraft server is random reads (because of the nature of minecraft save files), but with up to 95,000 IOPS 4KB Random Read, it is a beast.
Warranty: 5 years is an awesome warranty duration, what else can I say?
Price: Unfortunately, like all things not torrent-able, this costs money. At $125 it is roughly $1/GB which is a very good price point for an SSD.

TL;DR: Great performance/$, great GB/$, and it should last us at least 5 years.
Runners-up/Honorable mentions: Samsung 840 Pro 128GB and OCZ Vertex 4 128GB


And now for an ode to spaghetti westerns:

The good (estimated benefits):
First and foremost: faster backups. Backups will still be stored on the HD, but the actual world will be on the SSD. No simultaneous read/write on a disk-drive = no noticeable changes when backing up (hopefully). Faster loading in general, more responsiveness for you, the users.

The bad (nuisances):
There will be downtime. Possibly a large amount of downtime. The OS will need to be reinstalled (some flavor of Linux like Lubuntu), users and programs need to be set up, I will probably and finally set up a good backup system instead of relying on java plugins, etc... It will hopefully not take too long though, as it will be my third time setting everything up.

The ugly:
Price. While it is not a bankrupting amount, it is not pocket change. It has always been Remi's goal to run this server completely free for users (my goal is to enslave all of your computers, but minecraft doesn't have that feature yet). The money will eventually come. The youtube video is gathering money slowly through adds, and I have my own ventures that grant me money. The cost of this money is time, but I have a certain arrangement with Satan about that anyway (he says that donations could possibly make time go faster).

Fuck this is longer than the 2 sentences I anticipated. Well, I enjoy being transparent.

Alexxx boobiieeee <3

Holy crap, Alex posted!
and damn that's one hell of a SSD.

Minecraft 600.6.7 snapshot
=========================
+Remote Enslaving
-Removed Herobrine

First, I'm wondering why you chose the one with no reviews instead of the two others, such as OCZ Vertex 4 128GB

Secondly, I wouldn't mind covering some of the cost with part of the asicminer dividend. You should get a donation bar set up so we can see how far we are away from the goal. (also to increase transparency)

I think right now, we're going to go for a "get donations for half the cost, pay the other half out of our pockets" and right now, we have the money for the SSD. Alex and I just need to sort a few things out. However, it seems like there are a few thigns we need to figure out with future upgrades in term of CPU and mobo as well before we can really go ahead with anything.

edit: we're still looking into bitcoins.

I've got about 400 Kangaroo dollars in my bank account- I wouldn't mind parting ways with a bit of it ((And I realise that the Aussie buck is doing pretty well, nearly a 1 for 1 trade off with your Amuurican dollar.))

That and the dollar is just dying too~ I wonder how long until we can go 1 to 1 with the Chinese yuan.

Originally posted by Remilia_Scarlet
we're still looking into bitcoins.

You don't really have to. I'm pretty sure Alex and I are the only ones here in it. I can always just send Alex the coins.

well, never hurts

Originally posted by Jaeyjay
First, I'm wondering why you chose the one with no reviews instead of the two others, such as OCZ Vertex 4 128GB

Mostly because of this review: http://www.storagereview.com/corsair_neutron_gtx_ssd_review . TL;DR: It's got excellent enterprise performance too, which means it can handle heavy reads and tons of writes.

Originally posted by Jaeyjay

Secondly, I wouldn't mind covering some of the cost with part of the asicminer dividend.

Well we have recently decided on the address: 1Reimubank4yCjd3w4HQYQaHBUiPXJj3e.

Originally posted by Jaeyjay
You should get a donation bar set up so we can see how far we are away from the goal. (also to increase transparency)

That would be Remi's jurisdiction (I don't know how to vBulletin).