### Article Based on Video Transcription: Setting Up a Folding@Home Server During Isolation
#### Introduction
This article captures the full transcription of a video that details the process of setting up a **Folding@Home server** during isolation. The video, which is part two of a series, provides an in-depth look at the hardware and software requirements for running a Folding@Home server, as well as insights into how this project contributes to the fight against COVID-19 and other diseases.
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#### Day Two of Isolation: A Look at Facial Hair and Folding@Home
The video begins with a humorous observation about how long the presenter has been in isolation, as indicated by their growing facial hair. Despite the isolation, the focus remains on contributing to the greater good through **Folding@Home**, a distributed computing project that simulates protein folding to aid in disease research.
In the previous week, the team issued a call to arms for volunteers to contribute their computing power to Folding@Home. The main challenge faced by the project is not a lack of willing participants but rather an insufficient number of servers to handle the incoming data. To address this, the presenter decided to build and deploy a custom Folding@Home server in their home setup.
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#### Hardware Requirements for the Folding@Home Server
The presenter outlines the hardware requirements for a Folding@Home server:
1. **CPU**: A decent multi-core processor is essential. The recommended minimum is an 8-core CPU, but the presenter upgraded to a **Xeon E5 2697 V3** with 14 cores and 28 threads for better performance.
2. **RAM**: Folding@Home recommends 64GB of RAM, but the server setup uses **128GB (64GB ECC x 2)** to handle up to 1,000–1,200 clients.
3. **Storage**: A substantial amount of storage is required to hold completed jobs. The server is configured with eight **Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS drives** (12TB each), providing a total of 96TB raw storage, which reduces to about 60TB usable after accounting for parity and formatting.
4. **Networking**: A fast internet connection is crucial. The server uses a **10Gbps Ethernet connection**, with the goal of utilizing between 4–5Gbps of bandwidth.
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#### Upgrading the Server Hardware
The presenter details the hardware upgrades:
- **CPU Upgrade**: The existing **Xeon E3 2618 LV3** was replaced with the more powerful **Xeon E5 2697 V3** to handle the increased load.
- **RAM Expansion**: The server’s RAM was upgraded from 32GB to 128GB (64GB ECC x 2) to meet Folding@Home’s requirements and provide additional caching capabilities for mechanical drives.
- **Storage Setup**: The server uses eight **Seagate IronWolf Pro NAS drives** in a RAID-Z2 configuration, providing redundancy and allowing the server to tolerate the loss of two drives without data loss.
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#### Software Configuration: ZFS and RAID-Z2
The server is configured using **ZFS (Zeta File System)** for its storage array. Key steps include:
1. **RAID-Z2 Setup**: The eight mechanical drives are set up in a RAID-Z2 configuration, allowing the server to handle 1000–1200 clients and tolerate two drive failures.
2. **Cache Configuration**: A portion of the RAM (64GB) is used as an L2 cache for the storage array to accelerate performance.
3. **Compression**: Real-time data compression is enabled to optimize storage usage, though it may be disabled later if network or other bottlenecks arise.
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#### Network Bandwidth and Performance Testing
The server’s network bandwidth is limited to **5Gbps** using a traffic limiter, as the presenter expects networking to be the primary bottleneck. Initial testing shows:
- **Speed Test Results**: The server achieves 230Mbps download and 200Mbps upload speeds.
- **Traffic Limiter Effectiveness**: After setting a limit of 5Gbps, the server’s performance remains stable.
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#### Folding@Home Server Status and Usage
After one week of operation, the server has processed over **19,000 jobs**, with an average of 600–1600 jobs per hour. Key metrics include:
- **Storage Usage**: Approximately 3–4TB of data stored.
- **RAM Cache Usage**: The 64GB RAM cache is nearly full, indicating high activity.
- **Network Performance**: Spikes in network usage are observed when the server communicates with other Folding@Home servers.
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#### Community Contributions and Promotional Content
The video highlights a community-driven initiative: an exclusive **Folding@Home shirt design**. Proceeds from these shirts will be matched by Intel, up to $40,000, to fund additional servers for the project. The QR code on the back of the shirt links to the team’s stats on **extremeoverclocking.com**.
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#### Final Thoughts and Call to Action
The presenter emphasizes the importance of contributions, both in terms of computing power and financial support. The server will remain operational for the foreseeable future, and viewers are encouraged to join the cause by supporting Folding@Home through donations or participation.
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#### Sponsorship Mention: Drop.com and Koss Headsets
The video concludes with a sponsorship mention for **Drop.com**, which features the **Koss GMR-54X-ISO Gaming Headset**. This headset is designed for immersive 3D sound, improved comfort, and compatibility with gaming consoles. New users can receive a $20 discount on this product.
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#### Final Note
This article captures the full transcription of the video, providing a detailed account of the process of building and configuring a Folding@Home server. The video’s focus is not only on the technical aspects but also on the broader impact of community-driven efforts to fight COVID-19 and other diseases.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- This is day two ofisolation with a sore throat,and you're gonna be able totell how long I've been at homeby how long my facial hair gets.But that doesn't mean we'regonna stop making videos.So we did a Folding@Homecall to arms last week,where we had peoplecontribute computing powerfrom their desktop machinesto help run protein folding simulationsto help in the fight againstCOVID-19, among other diseases.But as we mentioned in that videoone of the main problemsthe Folding Projectis having right now is not necessarilythat there's not enough willing volunteersto contribute their compute powerbut that there's not enough serversto intake all the data.So we said we were gonnawork with the Folding guysto build ourselves aFolding@Home target serverand put it in our server room.That's what I'm gonna bedoing here at home todayand I've got one of ourold, decommissioned serversalong with a care package from Jakethat I'm gonna be openingup, using to upgrade itand then Lysoling theheck out of this thingand sending it back to him.And the video is broughtto you by GlassWire,instantly see your currentand past network activity,detect malware and blockbadly behaving apps on your PCor Android device with GlassWire.Use offer code LINUS toget 25% off GlassWireat the link in the video description.So it's pretty obvious whatall the volunteer contributorslike you are doing forthe Folding@Home projectbut many of you probably won't knowwhat role the server plays in all this.So here's the thing,when you're folding your machine says,hey I need a job to work on.What the server does is it saysall right, I've got a spot available,go ahead and connect to me.I'm gonna generate a job for you,send it off to you then you go ahead,you crunch those numbers andthe job's ready to submitand the server says,okay I'm ready for you.You send it back and it storesit until the researcherswho are working on theFolding@Home projectare ready to grab it anddo something with it.So for that to work, youactually need a few things.One is a decent amount of CPU power.Folding@Home recommends and eight core CPUwhich we actually do havebut for a couple of reasonsI'll get into later,we're gonna be upgrading the one in here.It's a little pinner.They also recommend about64 gigabytes of RAM.That's gonna let us handle anywhere from1000 to 1200 clientsconnected to our machine.The other things we're gonnaneed are a buttload of storagein order to hold those completed jobsand of course a fast internet connectionin order to connect to all those clients.So because we got 10 gigabyte ethernetalready built into this motherboardwe don't need to make any upgrades therebut we do need to swapout the 32 gigs of RAMwe've got in here, that eight core CPUand of course we're gonnaneed to add some storage.Let's start with our CPU.The Xeon E3 2618 LV3that we've got in herewas just fine for basic file server dutiesespecially given that we wererunning a RAID card in herewhen we originally deployed itso the CPU didn't evenhave to handle any storage,parity calculations or anything like that.But it's only got a 2.3gigahertz base clockwhich means that ifwe're actually loaded upwith somewhere over 1000 clientsthat thing is gonna berunning darn near base speeds.Not to mention thatFolding@Home recommendsa gigabit internet connectionand we are actuallygonna be running 10 gigand we're hoping to provision offanywhere between about fourgigabit and five gigabitof our internet connectionto run to this machineso we wanna see this thing meltif we can get away with it.Let's pull out this chipand now seems like as good a time as anyto open up my care package from Jackoo.What do we got in here?Ooh this is lookinglike pretty good stuff.Here's out two power cablesfor the redundant power supplythat's already built into this machine,a VGA cable so we can test it,make sure it actuallypowers on after our upgrade.Oh shoot, these RAM sticks gotkicked around a little bit.32 gig registered ECC memory modulesso that's gonna give us atotal of 128 gigs of RAMin our completed config.I will explain why we needso much a little but later.Got some thermal paste,some screws and this seems likethere's more than just a Optane SSD in it.Ahh, there it is!All right, so we areupgrading to a E5 2697 V3,that is a high performance,14 core, 28 thread processoror at least it was a few years back.Nowadays it's not really anything specialbut it should be more than enoughfor what we're doing here today.Go ahead, gt that installed.So nice, he included a little cleaning padbut he also sent me a clean CPUso I'm not gonna bother with that.I love these Thick Boythermal paste tubes,look at that, it's a hand for scale.I mean it's a small handbut you know how it is.Oh wow, that's a lot,ah, ah, well the good news iswe're not likely to run out anytime soon.This is a very earlyunit of this motherboardSupermicro actually sent us.I think it was one of thefirst ones off the linefor this thing 'cause itwas one of their firstMATX server boards that had10 gig ethernet built in.10 gig used to be more of like a ,well why wouldn't you justuse an add-in card for that?And it's become, over the last few years,an option to have justpre-built into the motherboard.And our CPU upgrade is done.Now let's talk about the storage.Folding@Home recommendsabout 50 terabytes of storagefor one of these serversbut because our networkconnection and our CPU,not to mention ourmemory are all beefed upwe could quite possiblyneed more than that.So we're configuringours with eight of these12 terabytes Ironwolf ProNAS drives from Seagate.That's gonna give us about96 terabytes of raw spaceor 72 once we give up twoof our drives for parityand then once we've formattedabout 60 terabytes of usable storage.Fortunately this case is supereasy to install drives in.It's actually on of the only thingsthat I really, really like about it.You just pop these open, slide 'em in,not tools,, no sleds, no nothing,just boom, just like that.That takes care of our capacitybut these are mechanical drivesand even in ZFS RAID, they'renot gonna be particularly fastso believe it or not,that's where our overkillmemory upgrade comes in.So we're gonna be using 64 gigs of our RAMto meet the recommendedspecs from Folding@Homebut we're gonna be using the other 64 gigsto actually act as an arc or a cachefor our mechanical drives.These are gonna be running ina quad channel configurationso we should have plenty o' bandwidthand I don't know, whatever,I haven't shouted out Kingstonfor sending these to usin a long time.They actually sent them originally for theSix Workstations, One CPU projectbut we have used them for tons of thingsand they've worked basicallyin anything we've put them inso good on them for that.You guys probably noticed thoughthat inside that Optane box there was alsoan actual Intel Optane 905p 96 gig SSD.This is gonna act as a level two arcso between our RAM and our SSDwe are hoping to accelerateour mechanical storage arrayquite significantly, alleviatingany performance bottlenecksthat we could run into there.Uh, where's my screw drover?So we're just gonna take one of theseopen PCI Express Gen3 8X slots,I was gonna put it in the next slot overbut I realized that puts it right upagainst the edge of the chassisand there's no cooling fan thereso probably better offsitting next to the HBAand having a cooling fan near itas opposed to being farther away fromanother heat source but nothaving any direct cooling.One thing we're not changing is this HBA.The difference betweenan HBA and a RAID cardis that an HBA doesn'thave a CPU built into itto handle RAID calculations.It's just a card that addsmore ports to your motherboard,in this case eight 12gigabyte per second SAS portseven though we're only running them at saysix gigabyte per second throughthis back plane over here.That's it then for the hardware upgradesand it all comes down tosoftware configurationto decide how best to use it.So one of the things we could do isinstead of using 64 gigs of our memoryto accelerate our hard drives,we might cordon off just 32 gigs for thatgiving ourselves the capabilityto handle over 1500 clients.That's something thatthose extra CPU coresmight come in handy for,or we might realize that we're better offusing our extra CPU horsepower to enablerealtime data compressionto our hard driveslike maybe we run intoa network limitationor some other system limitationand realize we just don'thave enough storage guys.That's something that you can do with CFS.For now though, all that remainsclose this puppy up, there we go,screw it together,and give the whole thinga good Lysol wipe down.I like Jake, he's a good guy,he can have the lemon-scented wipes.This is gonna be like thebest smelling server ever.Hopefully Matias is here to pick it upand we'll send it back to the office.- Er, er, er, er.Hey let me open this.Okay, so I don't actuallyhave the rails for this serverso we're just gonna sit iton top of this Storinator.It's kind of ghetto but whatever.I also don't have a screwdriverso I'm not gonna look at what Linus didbut I kinda know hat it is already.Man for a little server, shesure is heavy, there we go.Woo, okay.Hey, he gave me the cables back, nice.He stole the thermalpaste though, what the,what the heck?Okay, we got power.Plug one in for IPMI so wecan remote control this thing.Ah, oh right, I need a display.Do we even have spaces left on this side?Sweet, okay I gotta tryand find this back here,so this is P.Where do these cables even come from?Should probably label this, right?Ah, I'll leave that for the next person.Eh, it's working!Just make sure everything's here.110/28 gigs of RAM,everything else, it's working!Yes!Like Linus mentioned earlierwe're gonna be using something called ZFSfor our hard drive arrayso not only does it dothe work of a file systemby controlling how yourdata is stored and retrievedbut it also handles how all the physicalor virtual disks are partitionedand works to ensure the integrityof the data on said drivesNow that we've installed ZFSand verified that it's actually working,we're gonna create our zpool.Now we're gonna be usingsomething called RAID-Z2which is actually based on RAID 5but it's gonna allow usto lose two total drivesbefore we lose any data.I've already kind ofpreconfigured the command,written out all the disk names,so we don't have to wait for that,and I've also defined our cache on herewhich means we're gonnahave that 905p workingright off the bat.So just copy this commandin there, paste, enter and(grunts)Okay, let's check ourzpool list now that it's,should be in there.We see 87 terabytes, whichis a little lower than 96but you now, drivepartitioning and what have you,and then if we run DFH wecan se we actually end upwith 60 terabytes of usable space.That's a little bit down from 96but it should be plenty forwhat we're trying to do.There's still a couple more thingswe need to check off thelist before we can installour Folding software,namely I wanna set our arccache to a max of 64 gigsand then I'm gonna enable compressionbecause I think it's gonna be finewith the 14 cores we have,I think realistically our networkis gonna be our bottleneckbut we'll enable it for nowand if down the roadwe have to turn it off,no big deal.Now as a sort of last step,I'm just gonna kinda look at our zpoolso we're gonna do zpool status, Folding,and we can see all eight of our drives,one, two, three, four,five, six, seven, eight,and our cache drive areall there and ready to goand we have no errors which is perfect.In order for Folders to actuallybe able to access our Folding serverI've created some firewall rules.Now that was pretty easy butwe're also going to createsomething called a traffic limiterbecause we don't want thisFolding server to eat upall of our 10 gigs of bandwidthso we're gonna limit it to 5 gigabitbut I'm gonna show you guyshow this works on the laptop.As a baseline, I'm gonna runa speed test on the systembefore we enable the traffic limiterso you can actually see the difference.Okay we have our results inand we're looking at 230 down and 200 upso I think I'm gonnalimit it to five megabitwhich will be a very stark changeand you should be ableto see it right away.We're gonna go into our two rules here.It's already set tomegabit so we'll do fiveand then we'll go toour in, set that to fivethen apply and then wejust need to find our ipwhich I already did so10.20.3.35 for this laptop.So I'll just go add the rule in.So here's our results and yeah!Five megabit right on the dot.So now we're gonna changethis over to five gigabitand then set it up on our actual server.Now that we've got our zpoolconfigured and working,we've got our bandwidth limiterand our firewall rules set up,it's just a matter ofcalling the Folding guysand getting them to install the softwareso we can get this work server going.- Well, it's been aweek and as you can see,my isolation facial hair isquite long and this is great,I've got Jackoo on the lineand we're gonna be checking out how wellour Folding server is running.So Jake, give me the good news.- Well the good news isthere's enough work unitsfor most people now which is great.- Did we help with that oris that just serendipitous?- Yes but it's not only us helpingso they've also got Microsoft's Azure,I think they donated some servers,Oracle, you know the guys that make Javaand lots of other things,they're doing stuff tooand then there's us but ifwe look on the stats here,we can definitely seethat our server does have jobs availablewhich means work units are available.- Nice 19,000 jobs!- I mean for the first five days it was upthere was basically none'cause they just couldn'tcreate enough projects.It was no longer theservers but the peoplethat were the bottleneck.- So how we doing now, howmuch usage have we got?- I was kind of expectingmore to be honestbut if we look at the past historyyou can see like- Ooh!- They spike up quite a bitso like right there is half a gigabitand then thats- Nice!- 600 and then if we scroll out actuallyso that's like 1.6 gigabit.- Wow!- So from my understanding,these actual spikes, a lot of the time,are actually when thedifferent work serversare communicating with each other.The actual network bandwidthof individual clientsconnecting isn't too muchbut it's when they'retrying to talk togetherthat it really starts to hurt.- And how much storagehave we used so far?- Last I checked this morningit was already two and a halfor three terabytes of storage used.- That's awesome.- And we can look at our ZFS stats herewhich actually paints alittle bit more of a picture.So our RAM cache I set to64 gigs is completely full.You can see it's rampingup, slowly fillingso as things are beingremoved from the RAM cachewhen they would normallyget dumped back to the disksthey actually go to thelevel two cache insteadso this is already up to 64 or 40 gigsand it's only been likean hour or somethingsince I reset itso it does take a few days to fillobviously because it's only filling upwith stuff that's beingremoved from the primary cache.- Fantastic!And I actually have an update for youso we have created an exclusiveFolding@Home shirt design and all profitsfrom the shirts aregoing to be contributedto causes within Canadaaround the research,relief and treatment of COVID-19.So you guys are gonnahave to check that outat lttstore.com and what's really cool isIntel is gonna match every dollar raised,dollar for dollar, toa maximum of 40 grand.- And so that 40 grandis actually gonna go directlyto the Folding projectso they can get servers and stuff, right?- Yes, that's correct,apparently you already knew about this.- I did already know, yes (laughs).This is actually one ofmy favorite short designs.- And the QR code on the backtakes you to our team statson extremeoverclocking.com- (laughs)- So join the cause guys,we're gonna leave this server runningfor the foreseeable future.I'll let you go now Jakeand just share a word from our sponsorswith he good viewers out there.Drop.com, the KossGMR-54X-ISO Gaming Headsetis the featured product this time around.These are audiophile approvedand based on a popular Koss headsetthat was custom engineeredfor immersive 3D soundgiving you positional queuesfor where your enemies are coming from.There are some changesmade from the originalso they've reduced the tensionin the lightweight headbandfor improved comfort.They include a cord splitter,inline microphonewith remoteand detachable boom micand the boom mic workswith the PS4, Xbox, NintendoSwitch and more without hassle.Get it today and new userswho sign up on drop.comwill get $20 off on this headset.We're gonna have it linkedin the video description.So thanks for watching guys.If you enjoyed this video,maybe check out ourprevious part of this videowhere we built a monsterclient Folding machineas opposed to a server, that'ssome really good stuff too.\n"
