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.
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.
.
Comment