Big changes at the BYOND server room

ID:38708
 
Jan 31 2008, 11:59 pm
If you weren't online between about 9pm and 10pm BST tonight, you may not have even noticed. Those who accessed the site during a short period of time were treated to a moving notice:



And in about 10 minutes, we schlepped the BYOND servers up the west coast of the US, from southern California to Seattle. We sent out change-of-address cards to all the nameservers on the internet, and waited as the community started trickling in to visit our new digs. Some took longer than others, depending on how long it took them to receive those new address cards. If you're reading this, you've made it. Welcome!

Our new server room gives us well over 8 times the processing power of the old, in turn giving BYOND ample room to continue growing. For the technical, here is a comparison of stats:

Old New
Web
  • Single 2.66 GHz Pentium IV Xeon
  • 4 GB mem
  • 1 SATA disk
Hub/Database
  • Single 1.8 GHz dual-core Opteron
  • 4 GB mem
  • 1 USCSI 10k rpm disk
 Web
  • Dual 2.5 GHz quad-core Xeon (Harpertown)
  • 4 GB mem
  • 2 SATA disks
Hub/Database
  • Dual 2.5 GHz quad-core Xeon (Harpertown)
  • 4 GB mem
  • 2 SATA disks
  • 1 SAS 15k rpm disk

That's right, both servers now have 8 full cores, giving us many times more processing power than before. We're still working through a few software-related issues remaining from the big site upgrade a few weeks ago, but the new hardware is humming along mightily!
Feb 1 2008, 12:22 am
Awesome! Well done guys!
Feb 1 2008, 12:30 am
So you've dumped terrible dreamhost? :P
Feb 1 2008, 3:39 am
So I take it Polaris is back in the main stream of things?

Also, nice! They be some kick ass servers. BYOND Members pulling in enough cash now or are you guy still slightly out of pocket from it all?
Feb 1 2008, 5:23 am
Sweet, so far every thing seems to be running at top speed.
Feb 1 2008, 5:31 am
Yes, you can really tell the significant change in speed.
Feb 1 2008, 9:52 am
I spent quite a while in Chat yesterday while waiting for Tech Tree searches to return. Now we have new servers. Perhaps I should threaten people with my company more often. ;)
Feb 1 2008, 10:01 am
Greatly appreciated!
Feb 1 2008, 4:01 pm
Repiv wrote:
So you've dumped terrible dreamhost? :P

No comment on the adjective. But yeah, it was time for us to part ways with DreamHost. It's clear that they are more interested in shared web hosting, which is what they do best; they don't even directly offer dedicated servers anymore. After weeks of us begging to upgrade our machines and/or add a third and getting nowhere, even they agreed that we'd be better off somewhere else.

Tiberath wrote:
So I take it Polaris is back in the main stream of things?

DreamHost is letting us keep polaris (the original server -- a 565 MHz Celeron, long since retired from active duty) at no charge as long as it continues to run. Probably because we've been with them for so long, and maybe because we have a slight personal connection (their founders went to the same school as Tom and myself, graduating a year after us).

BYOND Members pulling in enough cash now or are you guy still slightly out of pocket from it all?

I'm not too sure - that's Tom's department. I believe server costs are covered, and probably part of Lummox JR's salary. It's currently a volunteer effort for the rest of us though.


For the curious, we're now using SoftLayer. These guys have impressed the heck out of us so far. We ordered the two servers and they were running and ready to login in less than 90 minutes. This was on a Sunday night, too! They also upgraded us at no charge based on what was available -- we ordered dual-duals at 2.33 GHz, but got dual-quads at 2.5 GHz. No complaints!
Feb 1 2008, 7:33 pm
Seems like those ads you guys have put up are really kicking in huh, or is someone taking a pay cut. Anyways, I've been meaning to say what a great job you've guys have done on implementing said ads. Quite professional and doesn't make the site look cheap.

Great work :)
Feb 1 2008, 11:01 pm
The ads really aren't as effectual as you would think, at least not yet. What we're trying to really do is get more casual game players involved in BYOND, which is tailor-made for them.
Feb 2 2008, 2:14 pm
Sweet. I'm getting blank pages a lot less often. (before I got a blank page almost every time) I think BYOND was being intimidated by my ancient computer.. hmm..
Either way it was enough to give me nightmares. (pun intended)
Feb 20 2008, 7:27 pm
I totally live next to Seattle...