Server rental store

AI in South West England

```mediawiki #redirect AI in South West England

AI in South West England: A Server Configuration Overview

This article details the server configuration supporting the "AI in South West England" project. This project aims to provide a centralised resource for information regarding Artificial Intelligence research, development, and application within the South West region of England. This guide is intended for new administrators and technicians contributing to the MediaWiki infrastructure supporting this project. It covers hardware, software, and networking considerations. It assumes a basic understanding of MediaWiki administration and Linux server administration.

Project Goals

The primary goal of this infrastructure is to host a comprehensive wiki, allowing for collaborative documentation of AI initiatives across the South West. This includes research institutions like the University of Bristol, University of Exeter, and University of Plymouth, as well as local businesses and startups. The system must be scalable to accommodate growing content and user traffic. Furthermore, it needs to support potential future integration with AI-powered search and content recommendation systems, as discussed in the Future Development section.

Hardware Specifications

The core server infrastructure is built around a cluster of three dedicated servers. Here's a breakdown of the hardware specifications:

Server Role CPU RAM Storage Network Interface
Web Server (Wiki Frontend) Intel Xeon Silver 4310 (12 Cores) 64GB DDR4 ECC 2 x 1TB NVMe SSD (RAID 1) 10Gbps Ethernet
Database Server (MySQL/MariaDB) Intel Xeon Gold 6338 (32 Cores) 128GB DDR4 ECC 4 x 2TB SAS 10K RPM (RAID 10) 10Gbps Ethernet
Caching/Search Server (Redis/Elasticsearch) AMD EPYC 7543P (32 Cores) 64GB DDR4 ECC 1 x 2TB NVMe SSD 10Gbps Ethernet

These servers are housed in a dedicated rack within a secure data centre with redundant power and cooling systems. Regular hardware monitoring is performed using Nagios and Zabbix.

Software Stack

The following software components are critical to the operation of the "AI in South West England" wiki. All software is kept up-to-date with the latest security patches.

Component Version Purpose
Operating System Ubuntu Server 22.04 LTS Provides the base operating environment
Web Server Apache 2.4 Serves the MediaWiki application
Database Server MariaDB 10.11 Stores wiki content and metadata
PHP 8.2 Executes MediaWiki code
MediaWiki 1.40 The wiki engine itself
Redis 7.0 Caching layer for improved performance
Elasticsearch 8.10 Full-text search engine

Configuration management is handled using Ansible, ensuring consistency across all servers. Backups are performed daily using Bacula and stored offsite. SSL/TLS encryption is enforced using Let's Encrypt certificates. Firewall rules are configured using `iptables`.

Network Configuration

The servers are connected to the data centre's internal network via 10Gbps Ethernet connections. A dedicated VLAN is used to isolate the wiki infrastructure from other services.

Parameter Value
VLAN ID 100
Subnet 192.168.100.0/24
Gateway 192.168.100.1
DNS Servers 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4
Public IP Address (Load Balanced) 203.0.113.10

A load balancer (HAProxy) distributes traffic between the web servers, ensuring high availability and responsiveness. The load balancer is configured to perform health checks on the web servers and automatically remove any failing instances from the rotation. Access to the database server is restricted to the web servers and caching/search server. Regular network monitoring is performed using Wireshark and tcpdump.

Security Considerations

Security is paramount. The following measures are in place:

⚠️ *Note: All benchmark scores are approximate and may vary based on configuration. Server availability subject to stock.* ⚠️

View full article | Back to Server rental store