SawmillCreek SERVER

[Aaron Koehl]

All,

I have migrated SawmillCreek over to new hardware.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be monitoring, tweaking, and making
adjustments, so bear with me if the site goes down for a few seconds at
a time.

(I won't be taking the site down for more than about 30 seconds at a
time, so if it's down longer than that, we probably have problems!)

Just making the 'Creek flow a little better!!

[Marc Schmitz]

Thank God man!
I was w/o the Creek all morning! I felt unfullfilled and helpless, hopelessly outa touch and uninformed. Thanks for all the hard work and best of luck w/ the new stuff.
I feel much better now :rolleyes:

W. Marc Schmitz, constant lurker and digester of SawmillCreek dust

[Nancy Laird]

I had withdrawal symptoms all night and morning - I was on the Creek when it went down last night and it sent me to bed early. Then when it wasn't back this morning--and I missed my morning cappucino--my whole day looked like it was going south. Now things are looking up again.

Thank you Aaron for fixing things. Did you get the new battery backup yet?

Nancy

[Keith Outten]

Nancy,

I haven't had time to discuss the battery backup with Aaron yet...or I should say Aaron hasn't had the time. The conversion to the new server is the biggest upgrade we have ever done since we started SMC. Even though it looks like everything is running smooth again Aaron has lots of work to do before he gets caught up.

As soon as Aaron can find a few minutes we will discuss our options, find a suitable battery backup and then decide if we can afford it right now or if we will have to wait. You were the only one who donated toward a new battery backup so if we decide to purchase a new one it will have to be funded from our emergency fund. Aaron will have to make the final decision based on our current situation.

.

[Belinda Barfield]

Thank God man!
I was w/o the Creek all morning! I felt unfullfilled and helpless, hopelessly outa touch and uninformed. Thanks for all the hard work and best of luck w/ the new stuff.
I feel much better now :rolleyes:

W. Marc Schmitz, constant lurker and digester of SawmillCreek dust

What Mark said!!!


Nancy,

You were the only one who donated toward a new battery backup so if we decide to purchase a new one it will have to be funded from our emergency fund. Aaron will have to make the final decision based on our current situation.



Do we need to have an emergency fund raiser specifically for battery backup? I know it would take a couple of days for the funds to make their way to you, but I'm sure we can raise the money! :)

Aaron and Keith, THANKS for all you do!

[Jim Becker]

Oh, yea...it was a very rough morning today! Congrats on getting the new server up, Aaron and Keith!

[John Schreiber]

Aaron,

Congratulations on the server install. I'm sure it was harder than it should have been. It always is.

Thanks for doing the work for your limited recompense. We all appreciate it.

[Al Willits]

Do we have a support group perchance....I almost fell off the wagon and may need help next time....:D

And I also say thanks, to all that work at keeping the forum up and running.

Al

[Don Bullock]

Nancy,

I haven't had time to discuss the battery backup with Aaron yet...or I should say Aaron hasn't had the time. The conversion to the new server is the biggest upgrade we have ever done since we started SMC. Even though it looks like everything is running smooth again Aaron has lots of work to do before he gets caught up.

As soon as Aaron can find a few minutes we will discuss our options, find a suitable battery backup and then decide if we can afford it right now or if we will have to wait. You were the only one who donated toward a new battery backup so if we decide to purchase a new one it will have to be funded from our emergency fund. Aaron will have to make the final decision based on our current situation.

.

Keith, I'm sure that if you let all of us know the cost of the battery back-up system that Aaron feels we need that many of us, especially me, would be glad to contribute to it. I didn't realize that you had actually decided to collect money towards the battey back-up system.

Aaron, thanks for all your work on the "Creek." You're helping to keep our community together.

[Keith Outten]

Do we need to have an emergency fund raiser specifically for battery backup? I know it would take a couple of days for the funds to make their way to you, but I'm sure we can raise the money! :)

Aaron and Keith, THANKS for all you do!

Belinda,

Lets not discuss an emergency fund raiser just yet. Aaron is still wide open with the server change-out and all the other things he has to do to get us back up to speed and we have the old server as a current backup for the time being. We have about ten minutes of battery backup right now which takes care of the short electrical interruptions. I know Aaron would feel more comfortable with more battery capacity so I will bug him about it just as soon as he catches his breath :)

The price range of a new battery backup is staggering, we don't want to purchase more than we need and the lower end models are reasonably priced. Aaron needs to evaluate our new setup to determine our needs. Possibly we could replace the old battery's in our existing gear. I paid a bundle for the battery backup we are using now when I purchased it for Hampton Roads Online. There is a battery specialty store in our area that probably could install new battery's, we will have to drop the server off line for a few minutes and remove the existing backup so I can take it in for them to evaluate.

Thanks for the nudge, you and Nancy have been real supportive and I appreciate your efforts.

.

[John Miliunas]

Thanks Aaron and Keith! 'Tis not an easy task to changeover a server this size but, it all is looking super!!! :) Great job and be sure to let us know what the outcome on the BB decision is. I realize how important redundancy is and, in many of our installations on campus, we have backups for the backups! :D :cool:

[Keith Outten]

John,

I can't take any of the credit other than ordering the new server. Aaron has had to shoulder 99% of this one all alone. He has spent some very late nights over the past few weeks preparing, much of the extra work was due to hardware and driver issues that had to be resolved between the new gear and Linux. Of course all the stuff came with Windows drivers...but we don't run Windows on our server :)

I am relieved that the new server is online now, we banged the old box pretty good over the last three years. i am amazed it lasted as long as it did, with our current growth rate the new box won't last near as long as the last one. In the very near future we will be hosting a million hits per day...amazing. Oh and we don't have a $10,000 Sun server to do it with so we squeeze a whole bunch of capacity out of our gear and our bandwidth. The truth is we are pretty frugal if you consider the amount of traffic we host on the type of equipment we purchase. We could never do it on a Windows server.

The new server has been running for a month so it should be very reliable...burnt-in so to speak.

Yah-Hoo !!!

.

[James Suzda]

Nancy,

I haven't had time to discuss the battery backup with Aaron yet...or I should say Aaron hasn't had the time. The conversion to the new server is the biggest upgrade we have ever done since we started SMC. Even though it looks like everything is running smooth again Aaron has lots of work to do before he gets caught up.

As soon as Aaron can find a few minutes we will discuss our options, find a suitable battery backup and then decide if we can afford it right now or if we will have to wait. You were the only one who donated toward a new battery backup so if we decide to purchase a new one it will have to be funded from our emergency fund. Aaron will have to make the final decision based on our current situation.

.

I sure wish there would be some “Creeker” with a truck driving between central WI and VA. Because I’ve got a BIG UPS that was made by Best Power many years ago that I would be happy to donate it to the cause. This unit weighs about 500# will run both 240 and 120 volt and has 4 big batteries to run the backup power.
I used this unit as a UPS for my home for many years and I finally took it out of service this spring as an attempt to use less electricity. (Also, the unit overheated and kicked out because of all the dust inside it. Long story! :rolleyes: )
Anyway I’m sure this unit would work again if it was cleaned up and at worse four new batteries would have to be installed. If we could find someone to haul it from my place to your place you would be welcome to it. You would need a 240 volt 50 amp supply to run it. I also have a smaller sized unit that only weighs about 200# that might do the trick also. This unit requires a 240V 30 amp supply and only has 120 volt output.
Would you be interested in either of these units or even both you could have them if we could find someone that would be willing to haul it for us? I’d hate to ship it via truck because if it doesn’t work for you the freight would be a big waste of money!
Jim

[Nancy Laird]

Whew! The Creek is finally up and running again. I tried to get in about 11 last night (NM time), and it was still down at 7:00 a.m. I was already starting to have withdrawal symptoms! Did we have a problem or did Mother Nature throw a fit?

Whatever happened, I'm glad it is back!!

Nancy

[Keith Outten]

Nancy,

We experienced a power outage that knocked everything here offline. Aaron is still working on the new server configuration so it wasn't setup to automatically boot the web server when electricity was restored, he fixed this this morning.

We are still running the old server as Aaron has a few more things to do before we can take it off-line. The drain of both servers plus the router and hub meant we had less than our expected 10 minutes of battery backup so the server went down and had to be brought back online manually. Once again we are reminded that we need to resolve our battery backup situation, this weekend Aaron and I did discuss it and Aaron is researching the hardware.

We will endeavor to persevere :)

.

[Nancy Laird]

I sort of figured it was the weather---that nor'easter hit you too, huh? Hope all is well, and IMHO, it's time to do some sort of fund-raiser for the battery backup.

I have to say that you and Aaron are heroes for keeping this site up and running with limited time and funds. I applaud you!!!! I think that without my hourly "fix" of SMC, I'd lose some sanity (more than I've already lost!!)
Thank you!!!!

Nancy

[Belinda Barfield]

Hope all is well, and IMHO, it's time to do some sort of fund-raiser for the battery backup.

I have to say that you and Aaron are heroes for keeping this site up and running with limited time and funds. I applaud you!!!! I think that without my hourly "fix" of SMC, I'd lose some sanity (more than I've already lost!!)
Thank you!!!!

Nancy

I'm with Nancy!:)