Ah, yes - here we go again - the regular Tuesday outage for mysql database backup/compression and other tasks better suited to happen during "quiescent" time.

For example, this week we replaced the failed drive in the workunit storage server with a new drive. That was painless. We also spent a bunch of time experimenting with the new-ish RAID server. I say "new-ish" as it's new to us, but it is an old system. For example, it can't handle logical volumes greater than 2TB. We however today confirmed (a) it can handle physical single drives at least 750GB in size, and (b) physical volumes greater than 2TB (i.e. put three 750GB drive together to make a 1.5TB RAID5).

We also tested that this system is keeping up pretty well doing a continual backup of our upload directory. That is, we're doing a constant rsync with the upload directory to keep a "hot backup" around on a separate system. We didn't have the bandwidth/storage capacity to do this ourselves before (and daily backups to tape were too expensive).

Anyway.. the extended length of the outage today was mostly due to revamping the way we're doing the backups. We're working to include better query blocking (to ensure the database is totally update-free) and figure out the best way to maximize our time, thus ultimately shortening these outages.

- Matt

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-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude

. . . nice work Matt - and that goes out to each of you @ Berkeley as well

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

Great work Matt. Glad to see you back. Hope your vacation was super.

Ed

Matt, thanks for the update. A suggestion,update the weekly Tuesday notice --instead of 3 to 4 hours, have it be either 5 to 6 hours (which seems to be more accurate), or 3 to 6 hours (which allows for the relatively rare situation where nothing extra is scheduled and everything runs smoothly). It is all about setting expectations.

Ah, yes - here we go again - the regular Tuesday outage for mysql database backup/compression and other tasks better suited to happen during "quiescent" time.

For example, this week we replaced the failed drive in the workunit storage server with a new drive. That was painless. We also spent a bunch of time experimenting with the new-ish RAID server. I say "new-ish" as it's new to us, but it is an old system. For example, it can't handle logical volumes greater than 2TB. We however today confirmed (a) it can handle physical single drives at least 750GB in size, and (b) physical volumes greater than 2TB (i.e. put three 750GB drive together to make a 1.5TB RAID5).

We also tested that this system is keeping up pretty well doing a continual backup of our upload directory. That is, we're doing a constant rsync with the upload directory to keep a "hot backup" around on a separate system. We didn't have the bandwidth/storage capacity to do this ourselves before (and daily backups to tape were too expensive).

Anyway.. the extended length of the outage today was mostly due to revamping the way we're doing the backups. We're working to include better query blocking (to ensure the database is totally update-free) and figure out the best way to maximize our time, thus ultimately shortening these outages.

- Matt

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No one made this comment yet... I just wanted to say great work getting the assimilation queue down to less than 100k. From what I've seen, it's been a backlog for a while until now. That should help storage space a little too, I'd imagine.

PS And I hope donations from Bluff's drive last week make some kind of difference we can see.

Thank you for this information, now I have a problem I have a small knowledge of computers. So I was wondering if you we can have this with laymans language, so that people like myself can truly understand what a great job you are doing and what you are doing every week to improve this wonderful system.

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Thank you for this information, now I have a problem I have a small knowledge of computers. So I was wondering if you we can have this with laymans language, so that people like myself can truly understand what a great job you are doing and what you are doing every week to improve this wonderful system.

@ madmac

I think Matt does already post mostly in understandable language, after all this is the "Technical News" forum.

May I suggest that if you don't understand a particular technical term, you could try looking it up on a site like http://www.whatis.com or http://www.wikipedia.org or Google etc.

Regards, Keith

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Sir Arthur C Clarke 1917-2008