I guess what I'm really looking for I guess is how much of a performance hit will the 2nd ( daisy-chained ) server have for internet connectivity, now that I know it's possible technically?

@dashrender said in Is sharing a single network connection between two servers dumb?:

This isn't a NIC teaming situation.

The OP has one internet connection that needs to be split over two servers.

Normally one would install a switch and then run a cable from each server to the switch, and the switch to the internet... BUT - in this case, the OP doesn't have an open power socket for the switch (it would cost them more money) so they are looking for a way to do ICS (Internet connection sharing) from one server to the other.

This really seems like a bad idea. I'm guessing this means no Out of Band connections for the servers, and only a single connection for both servers. So if the first server dies, the second one becomes useless.

Really seems like a time to re-evaluate the priorities here - why are you in a DC if you can't afford these other seemingly needed things.

Thanks for the response! If the first server died, the datacenter team would pull the cable from the dead server and immediately plug it into the 2nd server, so there'd be a small window of downtime, but it'd theoretically take over all duties immediately. Agree it's a bad idea, but this is all for a hobby project where some downtime is acceptable and I'm trying to really be a cheap muhfuh :)

@scottalanmiller said in Is sharing a single network connection between two servers dumb?:

Really depends on teh connection more than anything.

Sweet. So however good or terrible the connection is it'll be just as good or terrible ( or close to ) when hot potatoed through one server to the 2nd? The server being the middleman has 20 cores if that makes any performance difference for doing this.

@emad-r said in Is sharing a single network connection between two servers dumb?:

@creayt said in Is sharing a single network connection between two servers dumb?:

Is there much of a performance penalty for sharing the network connection into one server to another server from a port on the same card? Datacenter wants to charge me more money for a 3rd power outlet to run a switch and are only providing one Internet jack, would love to be able to get away w/

The cord into server a
A cord from server a to server b to share the connection.

Each server has 4 ports.

but you can use those 4 ports to make bond and enhance the connection reliability. so o need for the switch IMO

Can you explain this in simple terms? If all 4 ports are depending on the same upstream single cable, how does it enhance reliability? Just in case one of the ports on my card fails, the other's'd still work? Does that happen or does the whole card fail?

Is there much of a performance penalty for sharing the network connection into one server to another server from a port on the same card? Datacenter wants to charge me more money for a 3rd power outlet to run a switch and are only providing one Internet jack, would love to be able to get away w/

The cord into server a
A cord from server a to server b to share the connection.

Each server has 4 ports.

@scottalanmiller

In the article I linked to, dude says this: "There are many reasons why we use MySQL at Facebook. MySQL is amenable to automation, making it easy for a small team to manage thousands of MySQL servers..."

Gulp. Thousands. Of. Nodes. Those guys.

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@creayt said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

Interesting, I'd never heard that before and RDBMS has been so great for any use case I've hit so far that I'd kind of written off NoSQL as being extraneous in any project I've needed a db for. Will look into it, thank you.

Until ~10 years ago, RDBMS were so dominant that it was just "how everything was done." But as SaaS started to explode, the need for growth and performance change needs and NoSQL systems started to take off. They are really where the bulk of new stuff goes today, at least of big commercial stuff. SaaS vendors outside of financial use them for nearly everything. They are what power things like Google, Facebook, Change and other large websites that have to handle insane levels of data all over the world.

Have you found any interesting sources talking about what Facebook uses NoSQL for? Here's a recent article from one of their lead DB engineers talking about how they primarily use MySQL for what sounds like most of the persistent stuff that needs to scale to large numbers of users ( mentions shares, comments, and likes explicitly ). Apparently they've written their own storage engine for MySQL which dominates InnoDB and actively maintain their own branch of MySQL itself, which was last committed to 2 hours ago.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/190251048047090/myrocks-a-space-and-write-optimized-mysql-database/

Saw that No Man's Sky is 60% off today. Anyone played it? Any good?

https://www.gog.com/game/no_mans_sky

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@creayt said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@creayt said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

I would never, ever use SQL Server for something like this. I was only pointing out that in the closed source world that it is faster. PostgreSQL is a WAY better choice. But none of them seem like good choices for your project as they are all relational and relational will be a major problem.

But all of my data is relational, the nature of the project is relational, I don't know how I could even do it w/ NoSQL unless I just duplicated IDs/data everywhere.

What about it makes it relational? Is it financial data?

It's people interacting w/ public web content as intermingle-able groups, having cross-pollinating conversations about it, relating each conversation, participant, tag, and content piece to each other, classifying it in personal and group contexts for future relation, and using various analytical algorithms, eventually AI, to analyze the relationships between the different data at each tier in the hierarchy and use it as a suggestion engine to expose users to new groups, conversations, content, and other users, in a nutshell.

That's like textbook NoSQL target content there. Conversations, groups, tagging, analytics.... it's like the "who's who" of NoSQL target topics.

Interesting, I'd never heard that before and RDBMS has been so great for any use case I've hit so far that I'd kind of written off NoSQL as being extraneous in any project I've needed a db for. Will look into it, thank you.

As far as hardware, how would what I've described so far work for going w/ NoSQL instead of MySQL? Anything you'd change specifically?

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@creayt said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

@scottalanmiller said in Is this server strategy reckless and/or insane?:

I would never, ever use SQL Server for something like this. I was only pointing out that in the closed source world that it is faster. PostgreSQL is a WAY better choice. But none of them seem like good choices for your project as they are all relational and relational will be a major problem.

But all of my data is relational, the nature of the project is relational, I don't know how I could even do it w/ NoSQL unless I just duplicated IDs/data everywhere.

What about it makes it relational? Is it financial data?

It's people interacting w/ public web content as intermingle-able groups, having cross-pollinating conversations about it, relating each conversation, participant, tag, and content piece to each other, classifying it in personal and group contexts for future relation, and using various analytical algorithms, eventually AI, to analyze the relationships between the different data at each tier in the hierarchy and use it as a suggestion engine to expose users to new groups, conversations, content, and other users they'll like, in a nutshell.