Universe: Universe@Home and BOINC Pentathlon on admin point of view

Better late than never, so a few words about how Pentathlon looks from the
administrator’s point of view

As I have explained before, loads of pressure hits the server with thousands of
computers connecting with "bunkered" WU's. Usually we had ~45'000-50'000 tasks
in progress and just before the start the quantity grew up to 250'000 and later
stayed at the level of about 220'000-240'000 tasks in progress.

As you probably noticed from the picture showed in the other topic the only
problem we had was with hard disk speed because of thousands database operations
in the background of other server tasks.

As you can see in the picture below, almost in the whole Pentathlon competition
time disk utilisation was at 100% or just below it. We usually have stable disk
utilisation at 40-50%.
http://universeathome.pl/universe/pentathlon2.png
In the middle of the competition I also switched off all unnecessary daemons and
other software which usually works on our server and even without them the
server was off-line for 30 minutes.

Now, the situation is stable. We still have more tasks in progress than before
the competition (which makes us very happy) and we will also prepare to buy some
SSD's asap :)

Thank you very much for your power in Pentathlon and obviously for every day
with us and our tasks :)


Lepiej pó?no ni? wcale. Tak wi?c kilka s?ów o tym jak Pentathlon wygl?da? z
punktu widzenia administratora

Jak t?umaczy?em wcze?niej, bardzo du?e obci??enie pojawia si? na serwerze gdy
tysi?ce komputerów pod??cz? si? ze swoimi "zbunkrowanymi" WU. Zwykle mamy
~45'000-50'000 zada? w toku, a zaraz przed rozpocz?ciem ta ilo?? wzros?a do
250'000, a pó?niej pozosta?a na poziomie 220'000-240'000 zada? w toku.

Jak pewnie zauwa?yli?cie na za??czonym obrazku, jedyny problem, jaki mieli?my to
opó?nienia w operacjach dyskowych i wynika? on z tysi?cy operacji na bazie danych.

Równie? wida? na poni?szym obrazku, ?e prawie przez ca?y czas trwania konkursu
Pentathlon wykorzystanie dysku by?o na poziomie 100% lub nieco poni?ej. Zwykle
mamy wykorzystanie dysku na stabilnym poziomie 40-50%.

W ?rodku konkursu wy??czy?em wszystkie zb?dne demony i oprogramowanie zwykle
pracuj?ce/dzia?aj?ce na serwerze i nawet bez nich serwer by? niedost?pny przez
30 minut.

Teraz sytuacja jest stabilna. Nadal mamy wi?cej zada? w toku ni? przed
konkursem (co bardzo nas cieszy) i b?dziemy si? przygotowywa? do kupienia dysków
SSD tak szybko jak to mo?liwe.

Dzi?kujemy bardzo za zaanga?owanie w Pentathlon i oczywi?cie za ka?dy dzie? z
nami i z naszymi zadaniami :)

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