LightSpeedTaco

Hey all, If you navigate over to the “Is the Server Up” link on the left side of the page and follow it you’ll noticed I’ve added a few new monitors. Mainly for my use and notification so I can tell where the problem is actually occurring on my end of if it’s out of my control. I’ve also added a “Recent Events” section to that page where you can get the latest dirt on why whatever was down was down. I’ll try to be as honest as I can since I’d like to take ownership of any downtime incurred by me or otherwise, so keep an eye on that. To go along with the new editions to that page I added a banner that only appears on the homepage which will either contain news, announcements or other important information. It also features a button that says “Details” which upon clicking will bring you to the new and improved server uptime and details page! Convenient eh? I know, my uptime looks bad right now due to server maintenance and a networking fiasco both on my ends but things should be smoother sailing from here on out. I believe last I… Read More »Updated and More Detailed Server Statistics

Woo! There have been a lot of changes here at Nobreaks.ca I’ve just completed moving hosts to Digital Ocean in favour of their OS image selection and backup/restore/snapshot options as well as a slight decrease in cost a slight decrease in hardware specs followed naturally however the new OS we are running (Fedora 21) manages software and resource interactions so efficiently a downgrade was very much in the cards without risk of harming performance or availability. IPv6 is now used on the servers as well as some of the most up to date software I have ever used. So far it’s been a great experience. The snapshot capabilities are stellar and the regular backups done by them are a nice safety net. One outstanding feature I was taken totally by surprise was the fact that I can VNC into the session as it boots meaning I could utilize grub during an update of the OS for example. Topping out at nearly 90,000 files between the two servers I manage it takes the NAS running in RAID 6 even with the gigabit connection about an hour to rsync and backup to disk from empty folders to full synchronization. But, you can… Read More »Busy Busy Busy

As the number of user increased at a more steady rate than I ever expected I’ve been pushed to keep up network capability and reliability. These are some behind the scenes shots of what runs the Nobreaks.ca Plex Servers. All images clickable for large scale Brace yourself, rack mountable gear not mounted ahead… 24 Port Easy Smart Switch TP-Link, Smart RG DSL modem/router cooled by one of my many fans around the world   8 Port TP Link Easy Smart Switch behind 55 inch LED Smart Samsung TV, TV provided via IPTV, Phone via VOIP and PS3 (Roomates), XBOX One and XBOX 360 when I get the time.   Bad picture of the 6 bay RAID 6 dual gigabit NIC link aggregated NAS holding a backup of all Plex Data   Rear of NAS Above     Rear of PC spouting 6 Gigabit NICS all aggregated for 6 gigabit bandwidth Admin Fule above Night Shift Worker above LightSpeedTaco Out!

Thanks for sticking around this long! It’s only been a few months but we’ve had a great influx of Plex users and with this come new challenges that I’m still trying to tackle and hope you can all bear with me while I get things sorted out. It’s been a great past year and I’m looking forward to continuing to provide more features, content and ease of accessibility to you all. LightSpeedTaco

The initial setup of the new switch went very well however there wa some packet loss involved that I wasn’t sure what the root cause was. After a lengthy session of troubleshooting, pinging and wiresharking I narrowed it down to a busted/overheated modem or a bad cable/nic. Turns out, nic number 3 was busto. I’ve removed that nic and I’m currently performing ping testing for reliability and packet loss (if any, se far so good though). Everything should be working just fine and I’ll append this post once I have results in the morning that everything is stable. Thanks for your patience. LightSpeedTaco