Recommended Hardware for Project

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Greatone123

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 10, 2006
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I've got a guy that wants to fund this project he's got going on in his head. I don't know if he's got something worth doing or if he's just blowing money on a crazy scheme.


He wants multiple sites setup running servers 24/7


When we first start, we will only have 2 sites: My location, and his.

We want it all to act like it's on one big network, I'm guessing VPN would be the way of handling this. What would be the best choice to go with on this, I've got a RV082 router already. Would it be easier to setup another RV082 at that location, and besides hardware are there any costs software wise in running VPNs? I was looking at PFSense and their OpenVPN which being open source price is nicer.

To save on power costs if we went with PFSense, he was looking at the supermicro atom 1U servers, small footprint 2x NIC and since we aren't going to have heavy traffic I figured they'd be able to handle out little load.



Honestly i'm asking here because he's asking me, I know more then him but I've never done anything this scale before.





Basic Layout:

Every Site Contains:
Unknown ISP Business Class 5 IPs
Router with VPN (RV082/PFSense/other options?)
5 Servers each with own IP



Would it be easier to manage with VPN? or just leave it off and Remote in from the net?

He wants to be able to print logs from every server to a printer that's at his house, if that means setting up a comp at his house just for that I'm sure he would. He wants to be able to get on his laptop with RDP or VNC or whatever and personally monitor each and every server... sounds like a PITA to me... but hey, he's the one monitoring I just gotta get it up and running for him.


Any recommendation how to handle this? Hell the guy is paying for my internet access at my house because I'm helpin with the project and have 1 server setup here running XP home lol... (he doesn't require actual Server OS btw)
 
ya, I figured that... but is there going to be a difference in OpenVPN or the VPN on the RV0 router?

I've never done a VPN before
 
both will work just fine, i'd go with RV cause cheaper, RV042 at the other offices will do fine.

if they have static ip at each location should be dead solid, if not make the main location have static ip, and subs dynamic with a dyndns service
 
What exactly is being accomplished?
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hes got some automated stockadvisor/monitor/whatever that he wants running 24/7.

he wants more then 1 location for redundancy

he wants it all connected so he can monitor them and print the information it gives from his house.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
If it is mission critical, is he planning on running another internet connection for redundancy?
 
He's trading on the forex market or whatever they call it. The program does the crunching and places bids on the market for you. What about some virtual hosting?
 
Vitamin_uk said:
He's trading on the forex market or whatever they call it. The program does the crunching and places bids on the market for you. What about some virtual hosting?
Click to expand...

yep, that's exactly what it is.

I asked him what he thought about it, he likes the idea, but he was in the marines way back in the day and well he sets his mind on something he's gonna do it his way... if we run into reliability issues maybe I can get him to think about REAL hosting instead of DIY.

The way he's talking, he wants to setup like 5 accounts at multiple locations... he's like seriously trying to make millions off the thing.


When we get started he's gonna pay me for my time, so I'm just going with whatever he wants until it gets to the point that I can't handle the load on my own.




As far as redundant Net connections, that's why he wants more then 1 location, if net goes down in one area he'll still have accounts trading. Power in 1 area down same thing. The locations would be around 60 miles away from each other.
 
I figured I'll just keep this thread rather then making a new one since it's all for the same project.


Is there a possible way to setup system redundancy? like if there is a hardware failure? we can do power, internet... but what about like... some random harware issue? I don't really know what he's expecting.. but I told him I'd ask...
 
I'm just curious how exactly this works with the Forex. Is it working on split second transactions and fluctuations?
 
Greatone123 said:
We want it all to act like it's on one big network, I'm guessing VPN would be the way of handling this. What would be the best choice to go with on this, I've got a RV082 router already. Would it be easier to setup another RV082 at that location, and besides hardware are there any costs software wise in running VPNs? I was looking at PFSense and their OpenVPN which being open source price is nicer.
Click to expand...
For a site-site tunnel I prefer to use IPsec which both the RV routers and pfSense support, along with pretty much any other standards compliant VPN device. OpenVPN can do bridged networks though, so if you require that, that's a huge advantage.

AFAIK though, pfSense's IPsec implementation can't failover to a second WAN link unfortunately.

To save on power costs if we went with PFSense, he was looking at the supermicro atom 1U servers, small footprint 2x NIC and since we aren't going to have heavy traffic I figured they'd be able to handle out little load.
Click to expand...
For low power < 100mbit or < 30mbit VPN, go with an ALIX board. They're inexpensive, very low power, completely solid-state and perfect for applications like this. If you get a pair of them you can set up a redundant cluster in a 1U case that consumes ~10W.

Don't really have comments on the rest of your questions, it's pretty unclear what you're actually going for here.
 
Here is 100% of what i know.


software: Forex meta trader + forex megadroid


what it does: megadroid monitors the currency market US$ vs Euro, makes trades for you based on what it calculates.


what he wants: setup multiple locations so that it keeps trading even if power/net is lost at 1 location.


what he also wants: he wants vpn so that he can print to a printer at his location.


The current question: we have location redundancy for power/net down time. is there a way to make it system down time if there is hawrdware failure? really low end cluster maybe?
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If your using some small servers and worried about hardware failures i suppose you can't really go wrong with making sure that it has redundant power supplies, as well as using some type of raid 1 setup for your hard drives that way if one drive fails the mirror picks up and keeps the system running beyond that i dont know what else there would be that can be implemented for hardware redundancy. If i'm not understanding the question right let me know but hope that helps
 
nah you got it right.. that's what I told him. I guess he thinks the MB or something is just gonna blow all of a sudden... if he gets as many systems up as he wants, well... he will get over it :-P
 
Redundancy in the form of:
1) APC's for power outages
2) Raid 10 on all servers
3) Good backups
4) Fallover servers

Best option- 2 really big bad ass servers at each location. I am talking Dual Quads with 64+ GB ram. Tie these in to a redundant SAN and run ESX 4. Server goes down? No problem! New one is up in minutes!
 
he'll like that... he said if project goes well enough the will not be a budget limit...

i told him if he wants a lot of systems go virtual he said whatever you say... hah!
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normally this stuff get's colo'd on a trading room floor pretty much, latency is huge with trading like this, money is made by how fast you can get your trading in, so usually you want to look into what systems his software will be communicating with. What type of facility are you putting these servers in? how much computing power does his software actually need? is there a need for 5 servers? (as in each hosting a different app that should not be on the same server as another app?) Was the plan to cluster the 5 servers in some way? Seems a bit odd to use a $150 SOHO linksys router on the edge for some huge mission critical server cluster.
 
the only reason to have 5 seperatte systems is 1 for each trading platform so he can keep them seperateand easier for him to keep up with which platform is doing well or losing money.


we have a a couple systems right now running it for testing. low end dual cores on 2 gbs of ram and are making small amounts of money.


we have 1 platform thats gone from $300 to $1000 in 1 month.



the router and all that is for right now while we are small scale.


i dont have the experience or knowledge to use higher grade equipment.


we will most likely move to somewhere like rackspace or something when it becomes that impportant. for right now he has a rental house he is going to rewire and setup there.
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He will lose the lot. Its bloody dangerous. Things can go in both directions up/down in a split second. I would be hesitant about doing all the work for free.
 
I would be to... good thing I'm not ;-) that's why I'm going with whatever he wants to do... he's paying for it. He's paying for my internet right now because I have a desktop running some demos for him that he can RDP into also...
 
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