I’ve been running three servers for OCModShop for a long time. I thought it was a much better way to segment individual tasks for the whole site. At one point I had everything on one server: firewall, web, mail, and SQL. Not only were all of these services a severe resource hog, but if one part of the system crashed or hung up then everything went down. That’s when I built the other servers.
The problem with having three dedicated servers is that they produce a lot of heat and noise. Having an additional 100 watts and 15 decibels in the server closet just for a mail server that just sits there was very wasteful, even if it did segment certain tasks.
So I decided to move the mail server over to one of the web servers and take it offline. Now I have a hot spare if ever needed, and extra 1U parts in case a PSU blows up.
There were other reasons I did the move, too. The new mail software is a newer version, and supports things that the previous version didn’t, like smartphone Push, more security features, and is much faster.
There are other electronics in the 32U rack, too, such as a firewall, several routers and network switches, VOIP, KVM, and UPSes. Before taking the server down, all of these devices would pull around 350 watts of power, and the temperature of the room could very well rise to 110 degrees in the summer. After taking down this noisy server the whole system now only pulls around 230 watts and everything is much quieter.
Maybe I’m on to something here… maybe I need to build a single massive server with a bunch of virtual servers…