I know I’ve been talking about it for a while, but I finally moved the OCModShop servers over to fiber.
I’ve been getting prepared for this day for months by purchasing new hardware, server racks, firewalls, and getting the installation done, but had been taking my sweet time because I wanted everything to be “just right”.* There still are some things to do, like get proper ventallation in the new server room.
Push came to shove.* I have been with my datacenter for 3 years (my contract was about to renew), and they gave me one of their ultimatims that I was being locked out of the datacenter (again).* I figured now was the perfect time to move the servers over to fiber, even though they hadn’t been fully field-tested.
I have been working on a new main web server for a while.* It’s pretty sweet.*Here’s the specs:
Windows Server 2003 (x64)
Core 2 Duo processor
8GB DDR2-800 RAM
2x 500GB HDDs (in RAID 1)
3com RAID card
dual Gigabit NIC
nVidia 7300 PCIe video card (more than enough for server graphics)
I did have an old ATI card in there, but the server kept crashing… which has been my experience with ATI video cards in general.* As soon as I threw in a cheap nVidia card the server has been rock-solid stable.
So anyway, I quickly tested the*new server by hooking it up to FIOS and changed DNS over to one of the non-critical sites to see how well it would perform.* I asked Daniel (who lives half-way across the world in the Netherlands) to test it, and he reported that it was much faster, and came up almost instantly.
That was all that I needed to hear.* I copied over the remaining files to sync the new server with production and*changed DNS over for the main site.* I found out that the new files had the old SQL strings in there, so the site was broken for about 10 minutes while I fixed that.* I restored the new SQL databases, too, which left orphaned sql accounts, which I had to fix before the .NET application could connect to the databases… argh!* I had fixed these problems before but messed it up again when I did a last-minute restore.
So as soon as the new server was stable, I went to the datacenter to retrieve my server hardware.* As I arrived they said that they just rebooted their security system, so they let me right in without using my access card or fingerprint (those guys know me over there).* I quickly changed the server IPs to the new domain, shut them down, and carried them out to my car.* It was actually kind of sad, seing as I have been with them for 3 years… it was almost like a second home.* But business is business.
The fact of the matter is that the datacenter costs too much.* I was already paying nearly $350 a month to host my servers and have 1Mbit of throughput.* I was on a 95th percentile plan, and the traffic from OCMS averages about 1Mbit over a month.* So, they wanted to raise my rates, and start charging me $75 a month for electricity on top of my other costs… to which I say “nay nay”.*
I confirmed with others across the globe that the site appears much faster now.* It is a combination of the new fat pipe plus the fast new hardware.* Now that I have much more bandwidth, I can offer more services such as file downloads, videos, game servers and stuff.
In my book the move was a no-brainer, even though it took a lot of preparation.* Let’s see… $500 a month for 1Mbit of total bandwidth, or $200 for 40Mbit bandwidth?
