1 out of 1 Excelsior Lodge Webmasters prefer stats served Sun-ny side up
1 out of 1 Excelsior Lodge Webmasters prefer stats served Sun-ny side up
Submitted by Joshua Armstrong on Thu, 05/22/2008 - 14:03.The Lodge Membership and Finance Stats I promised earlier is surprisingly on schedule. I am planning to use two data marts (Membership and Finance) with two cubes in each mart (Membership and Attendance in Membership; Checks and Income in Finance). I have the Membership mart built, tested, and ready for the first data load.
One major question still remains: Which of my servers will host the Mondrian OLAP engine needed to run the analyses? Here's a quick summary of my dilemma:
| Machine | CPU(s) | RAM | Disk Storage | Network Interfaces | Operating System |
| Sun Ultra60 (1998) | 2x Sun Ultra-SPARC II (64 bit single-core @ 450MHz) | 2GB Sun Desktop RAM | 1x 36GB 10,000 RPM Ultra320 SCSI | 1x Sun Happy Meal 100baseTX Ethernet, 1x Sun NetLink 36base4 Token Ring | Sun Solaris 10 |
| Alienware Area51 (2003) | 1x Intel Pentium 4 (32 bit single-core @ 2.4GHz) | 768MB RAMBUS (PC800) | 1x 30GB 7,200 RPM EIDE (UDMA4) | 2x Intel Pro100 Ethernet | OpenSUSE Linux 10.3 |
| Custom 4U Rackmount Server | 1x AMD AthlonXP 3200 (32 bit single-core @ 1.2GHz) | 2GB PC133 | 4x 160GB 7,200 RPM SATA (150Mb/s) in RAID-10 | 2x D-Link (Tulip-class) Gigabit Ethernet | Gentoo Linux |
| Custom with Thermaltake Lanfire chassis | 1x AMD AthlonXP ? (32 bit single-core @ 2.2GHz) | 512MB PC100 | 1x 40GB 5,400 RPM EIDE (UDMA3) | 1x D-Link (Tulip-class) 100baseTX Ethernet | Microsoft Windows XP Home |
Well, from the above I can tell you which two are NOT in the running for hosting the OLAP engine: the Windoze box and the Alienware. The Windoze box because it's a Windoze box (duh!) and the Alienware because it sounds like a dryer with a zipper constantly banging on the drum and the noise would keep me up at night. So it's down to the Sun Ultra60 or the Gentoo webserver. Let's list our pros and cons:
Sun Ultra60
| PRO | CON |
| 2 CPUs and a 64-bit bus makes the requisite number-crunching seem trivial. | 450MHz per CPU is a bit pathetic for this day in age. |
| It's got professional-quality RAM and disks which make for professional-speed results and long component life. | Sun Desktop Bus RAM and Ultra320 SCSI aren't exactly the cutting edge of speed. |
| 10,000 RPM drive has insanely fast seek times. | No hardware disk cache makes for traffic jams in the software write buffer. |
| System likely to be idle 18 hours a day. | System also used for graphic design and Java development. |
Gentoo Linux Webserver
| PRO | CON |
| Dedicated server with server-only OS streamlines performance. | Server likely to be tied up serving HTTP requests and routing e-mail. |
| No network overhead during redirects because web server and analysis engine would be on the same machine. | Website and OLAP engine would compete for RDBMS query time. |
| Gentoo Linux makes deployment and configuration of software a snap. | Gentoo uses nonstandard directory layout to facilitate virtual website hosting. |
| Disk storage is insanely fast for reads and writes. Uses aggressive hardware cache. Can handle multiple data seek/write requests with ease. | Single-processor 32-bit system bus can't handle multi-threading, causing a number-crunching bottleneck. |
From the above comparisons, it looks like I'll be sticking with the Sun machine for the OLAP engine hosting. Another issue now is that I will need to lock down that machine a lot more than it is currently as it will have port 8080 HTTP inbound routed to it now and that exposes Apache Tomcat to hackers. Thankfully, Solaris 10 has an excellent reputation for security.
e are a Masonic Lodge constituted under the Grand Lodge Free and Accepted Masons of Wisconsin. We meet in the Lake Masonic Center at 1235 E. Howard Avenue in Milwaukee, WI. Our focus as a lodge is in charitable endeavors and support of community-oriented programs.
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