Shores of Hazeron

Shores of Hazeron
Server Grid

Here are some pictures of the server rack hosting Shores of Hazeron at the computer center. This rack hosts the scene, mail and login servers. The rack servers are housed in two of the tall cabinets in the aisle pictured. The web site and software downloads are not hosted here.

There are 12 identical Dell PowerEdge 1950s, each with a quad core Xeon CPU and 8GB RAM. These are the worker servers that are reported on the server status page. Each of them manages 4 tick threads accounting for 48 of the tick threads reported on the status page. The master, manager, mail and login servers are also hosted on these computers. Rack units are measured in U height. The PE1950s can be seen in the pictures as 12 identical 1U slabs that make up most of the stack.

There is one Dell PowerEdge 2950 with two quad core Xeon CPUs, 16GB RAM and a RAID array of six 120GB solid state drives. This is the SQL server. The PE2950 is the thick 2U slab at the bottom of the stack.

There are 4 identical Dell PowerEdge R815s, each with four 16-core AMD CPUs and 128GB 1600MHz RAM. Each of the R815s hosts 8 worker servers with 8 tick threads each, accounting for 32 of the worker servers and 256 of the tick threads reported on the status page. The R815s are 2U units, not pictured on this page.

The collapsible terminal is sort of a super KVM switch. It can control up to 256 computers. The connections are made using standard network cables and switches, terminating in an interface module on the back of each computer that splits out into a standard VGA and a USB for mouse and keyboard. A button on the keyboard lets you quickly switch to any of the connected computers.

Server cabinets are arranged in alternating aisles of cold air for intake and hot air that has been expelled.

Cold Aisle

The cold aisle is the front side for all the cabinets in the aisle. A/C is pumped under the raised floor. Tiles with holes are placed down the cold aisle to allow A/C to vent up into the aisle. The computers in the cabinets inhale cold air from the cold aisle and exhale into the warm aisles behind them.

Warm Aisle
The warm aisle is the back side for all the cabinets in the aisle. The computers in the cabinets inhale cold air from the cold aisles and exhale into the warm aisle. The warm air rises to the ceiling where it is vented off to external A/C units for cooling.

Each of these computers had cable management arms on the back in the old cabinet. This new cabinet is a bit shallower so I had to toss the arms or the back door wouldn't close. :(

The black bundle connects the servers to the command terminal interface box. This connects to the KVM terminal shown in the cool aisle picture.

The purple bundle is the back side network. The back side network is used for inter-server communications.

The red bundle is the front side network. The front side network connects the servers to the Internet.

The yellow cable is the final connection to the Internet.