Behind AnandTech - Upgrading the Server Farm

Completing the Upgrade

We managed to snap a few pictures of the case while the Intel STL2 board was installed before we removed it:

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With our new Forums database box up and running the question of what to do with the old database server came up.  The original plan was to bring it down to the lab and rebuild it as a web server, but with the Forums growing so quickly another week or two didn't seem worth it.  Instead, we left the server up in its original configuration and simply turned it into a web server -- one with a killer I/O setup that is.  This brings our total server count up to 10: 4 AnandTech web boxes, 3 Forums web boxes, 1 AT DB server, 1 Forums DB server and 1 mail box. 

At the current rate of growth, as well as factoring in some definite spikes in traffic over the next few months, it wouldn't be too surprising if we were at close to 20 servers by the end of 2001. 

Hopefully by then we will have more to chose from in terms of multiprocessor server solutions and we are sure to have enough interesting experiences to write about our future upgrades as well.