We have been saving up to get a new server since before Fellowship hit the screens in December, and it has finally happened. A little over a week ago, Dell shipped us a brand spanking new PowerEdge 1650. Since then Arathorn and myself have been spending all of our free moments working to get the new server ready and in production.

Today between 2-3PM EST the new server went into production. I am fairly sure that most people will be able to feel a notable performance increase in the responsiveness of the new server.

Hardware Specs (old server):
Compaq Proliant 6500
4 x Pentium Pro 200MHz w/ 1024K cache.
2GB of memory
7 x 9.1GB Wide Ultra SCSI Drives
Compaq SMART2 RAID Controller (2 x 2 drive mirrors and 1 x 3 drive RAID5)

Hardware Specs (new server):
Dell PowerEdge 1650
2 x Pentium III 1.26GHz w/ 512K cache.
4GB of memory
3 x 18GB U160 SCSI Drives
Dell PERC3/Di RAID Controller (1 x 3 drive RAID5)

OS Information:
The old server ran Debian Potato with a 2.2.19 kernel.
The new server is running Debian Woody with a 2.4.18 kernel.

Additionally, in the transition we have switched from the use of Thttpd for serving images to the use of RedHat’s TUX Web Server.