Actually, the "new" girl should be fine. It had a nice load on it this morning. This weekend we'll retrieve our (now) 2nd best server and get it wiped and updated software-wise and then reintegrate it once we're back. Then, sometime later this spring we'll be considering new message board software. Probably some other changes that we've been putting off should come too.
The 6th will be the new girl's first big test. The young filly can't do any worse than the old draft horse, and we hope that she'll perform considerably better. As Robert said, we'll be retasking the old message board server after a much needed reimaging and probably some additional memory. It still has some good life left in it for some more menial tasks. Some of the stuff the new girl is doing will be moved back onto that box so that both will be used efficiently. Once we get the hardware all finished and it has run for a while so we know all of the kinks are worked out, then we'll start taking a look at new software. I don't expect any major changes in that area until this summer. I need to thoroughly evaluate the options and come up with a migration plan, if we decide to do that overhaul. It is an interesting thing making substantial changes on a 24x7 site that gets this much traffic. I started the upgrade at about 11 last night, hoping it would take about an hour. It took about 2, which is pretty typical -- it seems that roll outs always take longer than you expect. It went pretty well. Once annoying glitch that made some users not see posts since Jan 20. I needed to delete a cache that I had forgotten about. Otherwise, it went pretty well. HornFans had just under 2000 people actively using it when I took it offline. I checked again around 2am after we had been back up on the new hardware for a while and there were over 2000 people online. For the geeks that care, that count is active sessions based on unique IP in the last 15 minutes. At the time of this post there are 3215 people online which is pretty typical traffic for us. I'm keeping an eye on the new server and she's ticking along without breaking a sweat so far. Sites this big present unique challenges just to keep up and running, let alone making big changes on the fly with minimal downtime. Again, blacklab deserves a ton of credit. He's been a prince.
It's not a girl. I named the new server Earl, the next I build will be Ricky, although that server may smoke, and the next Vince.
This makes me feel bad that I only plop down $5 a month. Gonna up that as soon as I figure out how. -Randy
during football season - what is the average at any given work hour? I now know that I need to begin donating. I appreciate all this board does to keep me sane (and my wife insane).
I'm pretty sure that we average about 9-10 K during football season during the day. Most of those are lurkers/readers, but they still use bandwidth.
Blacklab, is the new Hornfans server comprised of some of the parts I gave you? if so, cool. Glad to know I could help. If not, is it a bought server? Just curious what you ended up using.
There is no doubt that there is a difference. Congrats to all and thanks for doing it. I think Earl is going to do great on the 6th!
Out of curiosity, and no offense intended if this is better served as a PM than a post, does this mean that game threads will be permitted next fall...? I am of course assuming that they were eliminated to reduce bandwidth strain rather than because of their difficulty to police, etc.
Maybe, WT. It really depends on how well the new hardward and/or software does. The no game thread thing is largely a technical concern. We may give it a try again. blacklab will have to chime in with the specs.
