Infrastructure Upgrade 2012

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Revision as of 12:55, 19 April 2012 by Carnold (talk | contribs)
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Overview

A major upgrade to our core infrastructure servers is planned for the Summer of 2012. This is going to be both a hardware and software upgrade. The hardware has already been received and installed. The hardware includes a new central storage unit based on a Dell Equallogic 6010e iSCSI SAN; 2x Dell Powerconnect 6224 gigabit switches; 6x Dell R610 server class machines. The software upgrade will include the CentOS 6.2 operating system. The software upgrade will require a complete reinstall of the operating system, and user data copied from the old storage system. See below for more details about the software upgrade. Enabling IPv6 on most servers is planned, but may not get completed this Summer.

Note: I will try my absolute best to keep downtime to a minimum (usually less than a couple of hours per server). Due to the scale of the upgrade, some downtime for each server will be required because in-place upgrades are not possible. If you have concerns about downtime, email techstaff.

Completed

The following servers have been upgraded already.

  • clipper.cs.vt.edu - Provides SLO login, LDAP, and DNS services for Knowledgeworks building. Hardware upgraded to Dell R410 server class machine. Software upgraded to Windows 2008 R2. Changes include running native 2008 R2 mode. IPv6 enabled, needs DNS update.
  • earthquake.cs.vt.edu - Provides SLO login, LDAP, and DNS services for Knowledgeworks building. Hardware upgraded to Dell R410 server class machine. Software upgraded to Windows 2008 R2. Changes include running native 2008 R2 mode. IPv6 enabled, needs DNS update.
  • tornado.cs.vt.edu - Provides SLO login, LDAP, and DNS services for McBryde and Torg. buildings. Hardware upgraded to Dell R410 server class machine. Software upgraded to Windows 2008 R2. Changes include running native 2008 R2 mode. IPv6 enabled, needs DNS update.
  • ugrads-files.cs.vt.edu - Provides file services for undergraduate home directories, and internal shared storage. Hardware upgraded to Dell R510 server class machine. Software upgraded to CentOS 6.2. Changes include the latest version of NFS and Samba. Also, a different hashing method for undergraduate home directories -- before it was hashed based on the first letter of the pid, now it is hashed between "major" and "nonmajor." IPv6 enabled, needs DNS update.

In Testing

The following servers are being set up and tested. If you have questions or want to help test, send email to carnold.

  • www.cs.vt.edu - Serves out the main CS website. Software upgraded to CentOS 6.2. Changes will include add running the latest apache and PHP. Also, a development version of the website will be additionally hosted on this server for testing and upgrading.
  • mail.cs.vt.edu - Sends/receives emails for cs.vt.edu addresses. Software upgraded to CentOS 6.2. Changes will include running the latest verisons of postfix, dovecot, and mailman. Important: One major change will be to switch the LDA from maildrop to dovecot. This will impact the way that server-side mail filters and user forwards are handled -- will be using a completely new language called Sieve. The intranet tools to control the server-side mail filters will need to be re-written. Additionally, everyones' current mail filter script will need to be re-written -- should be mostly automated except for rare cases.
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