This weekend we will have intermittent site downtime as I attempt to add two new servers and set up
MySQL Replication off of our primary database server.
This new hardware is the by-product of most generous user contributions! I offer many thanks to you'se who have stuffed the donation box, and those who have made hardware donations. Hopefully, if things go according to plan these gestures will result in a faster, more featureful site.
---boring technical info---
We currently run on two machines, a database and webserver, both VA Linux 2200 Dual Pentium III/733s
I will be adding one more 2200 as a webserver which will be testing a new kernel and doubling the number of connections we can serve.
I will also be adding a screamingly fast Dual AthlonMP 1600 to replace our current database server. I hope to set up our old DB server as a slave database, which can be used for searching, backups (no more Word Galaxy?!?), and allow us to do more complex data aggregations.
I also might be playing around with mod_gzip if our webservers look like they can spare the cycles.
It's very possible we may go up and down several times over the weekend, especially if I have to do any failing back. Please don't send me nasty emails if you can't get at the site. Also, I strongly recommend that you save local copies of anything you post during the turbulence in the case of a database migration failure and/or corrupted/lost data -- if this is the case, we may restore off a backup from the beginning of the day tomorrow.
Finally, I'm on Pacific time, so this will very probably continue into Sunday according to server time.
Thank you. Hope for the best...
--nate