100 Server Build and Install

mojeek

02 December 2019

3 min

After receiving further investment in August from a new private investor who shares a lot of the same values with Mojeek, we've been able to press ahead and start going all out on our big plans for the future. To say the least we have entered a very exciting time, but before we tell you more we would firstly like thank all those who have supported us on our journey so far.

Whether you're a Mojeek veteran or you've only discovered us recently we fully appreciate your dedication and patience in using our service throughout its continued growth, especially considering the small size of our team and the calibre of the search giants we are competing against. As we look to the future, what we can promise is that Mojeek is about to get bigger and better! And we can't wait for you to join us for the ride.

Let's take a look at what we have been up to in the first step in this next chapter. You might have already guessed it, but of course it begins with more servers!

Delivery

With no time to waste we have already taken delivery of 100 new servers, this almost doubles the number we previously had! These are all Supermicro 2U twin node bare bone servers and each node will be fitted with dual Intel E5-2620 CPUs, 64GB ECC RAM and between 2 and 6 SATA HDDs depending on the server usage. We buy these parts separately in order to source the best deal and assemble them ourselves.

server boxes — *"Even more boxes of servers at Custodian Data Centre"*

Building

These new servers will enable us to grow our index from 2.5 to over 4 billion pages over the next 6 months. This is an incredible amount of information being added to Mojeek's search index. This will be the equivalent of adding approximately a Wikipedia's worth of information to Mojeek on a daily basis!

Installing

Below are photographs of James and Igor installing the servers into the racks. We'll be fitting 20 servers (40 nodes) and 3 top-of-rack (ToR) switches into each rack.

The jump from a 2.5 billion page index to 4 billion certainly is a great leap forward in a short amount of time. But once that's done, we won't be stopping there. There are already plans in place to more than double our capacity and increase our index to 8 billion pages the following year!

And there's more

Alongside increasing the size of our search index we will also be tweaking our algorithm, so overall the quality of the results we return will be dramatically improved, making your search experience much better.

As well as improving the quality of our search results, we will also be adding plenty of new features and improving your experience on Mojeek all round, such as incorporating maps and business listings. So we would love for you to continue supporting us, and together, we can build the world's alternative search engine.