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What kind of hardware does Slashdot run on?

[Note: This writeup originally appeared as a Slashdot post. You can see the original post, complete with comments, here. ]

At the request of countless users, we're happy to finally present a summary of the new setup over at Exodus. It's the result of over 6 months of work from a lot of people, so shout-outs to Adam, Kurt, and Scoop, Team P: Pudge, PatG & Pater for the code, and Martin, BSD-Pat, and Liz for getting the hardware and co-loc taken care of.

The original version of this document was written by Andover.Net Alpha Geek Kurt Grey. The funny jokes are his. The stupid jokes are mine.

The Backstory

We realized soon that our setup at Digital Nation was very flawed. We were having great difficulty administering the machines and making changes. But the real problem was that all the SQL traffic was flowing over the same switch. The decision was made to move to Exodus to solve these problems, as well as to go to a provider that would allow us to scatter multiple data centers around the world when we were ready to do so.

Meanwhile, Slashcode kicked and screamed its way to v1.0 at the iron fists of CaptTofu (Patrick Galbraith) and Pudge (Chris Nandor). The list of bug fixes stretches many miles, and the world rejoiced, although Slashdot itself continued to run the old code until we made the move.

The Co-Loc

Slashdot's new co-location site is now at Andover.Net's own (pinky finger to the mouth) $1 million dedicated data center at the Exodus network facility in Waltham, Mass, which has the added advantage of being less than a 30 minute drive for most of our network admins -- so they don't have to fly cross-country to install machines. We have some racks sitting at Exodus. All boxes are networked together through a Cisco 6509 with 2 MSFCs and a Cisco 3500 so we can rearrange our internal network topology just by reconfiguring the switch. Internet connectivity to/from the outside world all flows through an Arrowpoint CS-800 (which replaced the CS-100 that blew up last week) switch which acts as both a firewall load balancer for the front end Web servers. It also so happens that Arrowpoint shares the same office building with Andover.Net in Acton so whenever we need Arrowpoint tech support we just walk upstairs and talk to the engineers. Like, say, last week when the 100 blew up ;)

The Hardware

  • 5 load balanced Web servers dedicated to pages
  • 3 load balanced Web servers dedicated to images
  • 1 SQL server
  • 1 NFS Server

All the boxes are VA Linux Systems FullOns running Debian (except for the SQL box). Each box (except for the SQL box) has LVD SCSI with 10,000 RPM drives. And they all have 2 Intel EtherExpress 100 LAN adapters.

The Software

Slashdot itself is finally running the latest release of Slashcode (it was pretty amusing being out of date with our own code: for nearly a year the code release lagged behind Slashdot, but my, how the tables have turned).

Slashcode itself is based on Apache, mod_perl and MySQL. The MySQL and Apache configs are still being tweaked -- part of the trick is to keep the MaxClients setting in httpd.conf on each web server low enough to not overwhelm the connection limits of database, which in turn depends on the process limits of the kernel, which can all be tweaked until a state of perfect zen balance has been achieved ... this is one of the trickier parts. Run 'ab' (the apache bench tool) with a few different settings, then tweak SQL a bit. Repeat. Tweak httpd a bit. Repeat. Drink coffee. Repeat until dead. And every time you add or change hardware, you start over!

The AdFu ad system has been replaced with a small Apache module written in C for better performance, and that too will be open sourced When It's Ready (tm). This was done to make things consistent across all of Andover.Net (I personally prefer AdFu, but since I'm not the one who has to read the reports and maintain the list of ads, I don't really care what Slashdot runs).

Fault tolerance was a big issue. We've started by load balancing anything that could easily be balanced, but balancing MySQL is harder. We're funding development efforts with the MySQL team to add database replication and rollback capabilities to MySQL (these improvements will of course be rolled into the normal MySQL release as well).

We're also developing some in-house software (code named "Odyssey") that will keep each Slashdot box synchronized with a hot-spare box, so in case a box suddenly dies it will automatically be replaced with a hot-spare box -- kind of a RAID-for-servers solution (imagine... a Beowulf cluster of these? rimshot) Yes, it'll also be released as open source when its functional.

Security Measures

The Matrix sits behind a firewalling BSD box and an Arrowpoint Load balancer. Each filters certain kinds of attacks and frees up the httpd boxes to concentrate on just serving httpd, and allows the dedicated hardware to do what it does best. All administrative access is made through a VPN (which is just another box).

Hardware Details

  • Type I (web server)
    • VA Full On 2x2
    • Debian Linux frozen
    • PIII/600 MHz 512K cache
    • 1 GB RAM
    • 9.1GB LVD SCSI with hot swap backplane
    • Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on moboard)
    • Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter

  • Type II (kernel NFS with kernel locking)
    • VA Full On 2x2
    • Debian Linux frozen
    • Dual PIII/600 MHz
    • 2 GB RAM
    • (2) 9.1GB LVD SCSI with hot swap backplane
    • Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on motherboard)
    • Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter

  • Type III (SQL)
    • VA Research 3500
    • Red Hat Linux 6.2 (final release + tweaks)
    • Quad Xeon 550 MHz, 1MB cache
    • 2 GB RAM
    • 6 LVD disks, 10000 RPM (1 system disk, 5 disks for RAID5)
    • Mylex Extreme RAID controller 16 MB cache
    • Intel EtherExpress Pro (built-in on motherboard)
    • Intel EtherExpress 100 adapter


Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00

Why doesn't Slashdot display in Browser X?

Ummm, I don't know? Slashdot has some pretty ancient and nasty HTML in it. It breaks some older browsers. Things work pretty well on lynx, w3m, Netscape 4.x+ and IE4.x+. It might work on other browsers. It might not. If you see a problem, feel free to mail us and let us know, but for the most part, if you can't tell us how to fix it, we won't. We don't have every browser running, and we're not psychic.

Answered by:
CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00

Where/Why do you use cookies?

See this.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00

Can I have your poll scripts

The poll scripts are included with the Slashdot source code.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/21/00

Why are you generating so many pages dynamically?

We're really not generating that many pages dynamically. The homepage, the section indexes, and the articles are all generated and stored for users as updates occur. These pages represent 50-60% of the site's total traffic. The only pages that are generated dynamically are the comments pages. These are dynamic for several reasons:

  • They change a lot.

  • The deeper you go, the fewer times the pages are hit.

  • User preferences and thresholds allow the comments to be customized to a user's taste. The static pages ignore those tastes.



Answered by:
CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00

What about the source code to this site?

The source code is called Slash and it has been released under the GPL. It contains pretty much everything that you see on Slashdot, but cleaned up a bit for general purpose use. You can use it to create your own weblog. With features like an online story editor, mass moderation, customizable user preferences and oh-so-much more. It's a fun little adventure. However it's not for the faint of heart either; it's got bugs.

Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/13/00


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Старый глюк лучше новых двух!

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