Re: Guix infrastructure

[Ricardo Wurmus]

myglc2 <address@hidden> writes:

>>>> The bayfront hardware described here ...
>>>>
>>>> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/growing-our-build-farm.html
>>>>
>>>> ... seems weak to me. Is there a plan to scale it up and make it redundant?
>>>
>>> It will be a lot more powerful than the current Hydra system. As for
>>> specific plans, I'll let those administering the system chime in.
>>
>> That machine is super powerful…
>
> Well, I disagree. A 2010 motherboard with 2 x 2011 CPUs (16 core at
> 1.6GHz) is weak compared to modern servers.

The machine is sufficiently powerful for what it should do.  It just
doesn’t do that yet, because it crashes.  Bayfront is *not* the build
farm, it’s just the front-end of that build farm.

> As you have experienced here, the learning/deployment costs and hassle
> associated with each new type of server often dwarfs other costs. The
> best way to minimize this is to minimize the number of types of servers
> you own.

The servers I’m preparing to add to the build farm once I’m back to the
office are all of the same type.  There are dozens of them.

> At this point it makes sense to abandon the Vikings motherboard and
> choose a popular, mainstream, current x86_64 motherboard. Since AMD has
> not been a competitive server vendor for the last ~8 years this means,
> practically speaking, picking a popular intel-based motherboard.

There is a group of sysadmins in contact with Vikings and taking care of
the build farm.  I’d rather keep the discussions about how to move
forward with our servers there.

--
Ricardo

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