AustLII [Home] [Databases] [Search] [WorldLII] [Feedback] [Help] Related Links

AustLII...some technical details

* AustLII Technical Library
* Sponsors
* About AustLII

You are here: AustLII >> About AustLII >> AustLII...some technical details

Current Technical Details

Last updated: August 2007

Hardware and Software

kirra: AustLII's main server is a Sun Fire E2900 server with twelve dual-core UltraSPARC IV+ CPUs and 96GB of memory that is connected via a gigabit link to the UTS network.

storage: AustLII's main system for storage is an EMC NS 700 NAS server with 10TB raw storage space scalable to 64TB. A similarly spec'd unit that is located off-site is used for backup and disaster recovery.

wambera: AustLII's main development machine is a Sun Fire V880 server, with eight UltraSPARC III CPUs and 64GB of memory.

bondi: AustLII's main mail server is a Sun Fire V490 server, with four UltraSPARC IV CPUs, and 16Gb of memory.

bar: bar is a Sun Fire B100s server with a UltraSPARC IIe 650MHz CPU with 1 GB of memory. Bar serves as a backup server for kirra and is used for the beta.austlii.edu.au domain.

dns and firewall: AustLII's DNS (lingiari) and firewall are running on Sun Fire V40z servers with two dual-core AMD Opteron processors and 2GB of memory. AustLII uses the Check Point software as its firewall.

others: We use a Sun Enterprise 4500 and 3000 for backup and development purposes. There are other servers which handle virtual hosting (wanda), web spidering (groper), anti-virus (mabo), special projects (portsea) and other tasks, they are all Sun Fire B100s servers with UltraSPARC IIe CPUs and 1Gb of memory. There are also a couple of Sun Ultra 1's and 5's that are still in use for development and testing purposes as well as desktops. Our team use a variety of operating systems on their desktops, including Solaris, Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD and OS X.

the beach thing: Almost all AustLII machines are named after Australian beaches (yes, even "bar" and "kirra"). A tradition from 1996 reflecting where we'd all rather be ...


Last updated: March 2006

Hardware and Software

kirra: AustLII's main server is a Sun Fire V880 server, with eight UltraSPARC III CPUs, 64GB of memory as well as a gigabit link to the UTS network.

storage: AustLII's main system for storage is an EMC NS 700 NAS server with 8TB raw storage space scalable to 64TB.

bar: bar is a Sun Fire B100s server with a UltraSPARC IIe 650MHz CPU with 1 GB of memory. Bar serves as a backup server for kirra as well as a development server. It acts as the host for our beta.austlii.edu.au domain.

bondi: AustLII's main mail server and development machine is a Sun Fire V490 server, with four UltraSPARC IV CPUs, and 16Gb of memory.

dns and firewall: AustLII's DNS (lingiari) and firewall are running on Sun Fire V40z servers with two dual-core AMD Opteron processors and 2GB of memory. AustLII uses Check Point software as its firewall.

others: We use a Sun Enterprise 4500 and 3000 for backup and development purposes. There are other servers which handle virtual hosting (wanda), web spidering (groper), anti-virus (mabo), special projects (portsea) and other tasks, they are all Sun Fire B100s servers with UltraSPARC IIe CPUs and 1Gb of memory. There are also a couple of Sun Ultra 1's and 5's that are still in use for development and testing purposes as well as desktops. Our team use a variety of operating systems on their desktops, including Solaris, Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD and MacOS 8,9,X.

the beach thing: Almost all AustLII machines are named after Australian beaches (yes, even "bar" and "kirra"). A tradition from 1996 reflecting where we'd all rather be ...


Last updated: September, 1999

Hardware

bar: The main AustLII server at www.austlii.edu.au (known internally as "bar") is a Sun Enterprise 4501 server, with two 450 MHz CPUs, 1 Gb main memory and two RAID arrays connected via fibre optic and SCSI interfaces. It is connected to the main router via 100 Mb full duplex link and from there via UTS to the NSW Regional Network.

bondi, bronte, wanda: Two secondary servers (mail.austlii.edu.au aka "bondi" and beta.austlii.edu.au aka "bronte") handle mail, DNS and other services and also act as "workhorses" for document conversion, development and other tasks. They are both single-CPU Sun UltraSPARC 1's with 512 Mb main memory each and about 20 Gb disk space. A third server (a Sun SPARC 4) runs all virtual servers in addition to some public FTP mirrors.

others: A couple of Sun UltraSPARC 5's act as development and testing machines for new software considered too unstable for "beta". These machines, as well as two more Sun SPARC 4's also act as personal workstations. AustLII staff run a mixture of PC (Windows 98, Windows NT, Linux) and Apples (MacOS 8) as personal workstations. An array of Sun IPX's running Redhat Linux at wysh.austlii.edu.au run various software for inferencing work.

the beach thing: almost all AustLII machines are named after Australian beaches (yes, even "bar" and "wineglass"). A tradition from 1996 reflecting where we'd all rather be...

Software

OS: The main servers run Sun's Solaris (a UNIX operating system) however we have begun experimenting with Linux for SPARCs on some hardware. Personal workstations run a mix of Windows, MacOS, Redhat Linux (and once upon a time, OS/2 Warp and BeOS).

security: various network monitoring and control, as well as OS-level software, including SATAN, COPS, Tripwire, ASET, TCP Wrappers. Additional custom software developed here at AustLII.

servers: The main web server is Apache, with numerous modifications including mod_perl, Mason, FastCGI and some modules developed in-house. Mail lists managed with majordomo. Public FTP services handled by NcFTPd. LDAP handled by OpenLDAP.

browsers: Netscape Communicator, MS Internet Explorer, Opera, IBM WebExplorer, Lynx and numerous more "exotic" browsers.

search: Our in-house SINO search software handles all search functionality across the site. Remote indexing managed by Gromit (also developed here). Document management of World Law index handled by Anarchivist (aka "Feathers II").

stuff: We couldn't get by without Perl, (including PerlTK, Mason, mod_perl, LWP, libnet) GNU C/C++, Linux, FreeBSD (and the *BSD family!), OpenLDAP, Berkeley DB, and a host of other freely distributed software.


AustLII ... some technical details (1996)

The following is how this page read in 1996, and is kept for the purposes of historical comparison.

Hardware

austlii is a SUN SPARCserver 20 with two 50MHz SuperSPARC processors, 64MB of RAM, about 10GB of disk, and 4mm and 8mm tape drives. austlii is the production WWW server for the Australasian Legal Information Institute. It also provides mail, ftp, news and DNS services for AustLII.

arkady is a SUN SPARCstation 5 with 32MB of RAM and 1.5GB of disk. It is the development machine and is used by employees and consultants for prototyping and construction.

fruitcake is a Apple Macintosh Powerbook 520 which is used by the manager for general administrative tasks and as a home and demo machine. It is most commonly found on a PPP link made via a Netcomm M11F modem.

Various other machines are used for AustLII development and production, but the significant machines are listed above.

Software

operating systems

security

servers

browsers

search

markup


AustLII: Copyright Policy | Privacy Policy | Disclaimers | Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/austlii/technical.html