So ... I have spent all day doing everything imaginable to get more oomph out of the server. Turns out all that fuss was because we had links to threads shared on some other high traffic places. We effectively collapsed under our own popularity all day long.

The currently deployed server is maxed out in the area we need help the most: CPU power. There are no more sockets left for new CPUs. This means a new server. And unlike previous new server cycles where I buy something minimal and upgrade it over time ... I'm going for something maxed out (with the exception of RAM) from the get go for a few reasons:

1) This will allow me to deploy the new server in Atlanta, and then roll the new site over to it. So instead of a downtime of me driving from Dallas to Atlanta, the downtime is however long it takes to transfer the database remotely.

2) I can then retrieve the current server from Dallas and deploy it TOO in Atlanta. This means we'd have 4 high power servers with the original server (Waterboy) on standby. The effective combined upgrade oomph is about three times what we have now. This should carry us through football season and a few years to come.

So ... why am I saying all this? This SOAB is EXPENSIVE.




So, let's get some FAQ's out of the way:

Q: But hey GTS ... what about that Cloud stuff! Amazon AWS! Etc!
A: I priced that during the downtime today while waiting for stuff to compile. Just getting a database with enough oomph to hold us on Amazon AWS will be THREE TIMES the overhead. I shudder to think of the monthly cost once I've added Elastic Beanstalk instances for PHP. The entire reason I buy and colocate the hardware is that over the lifetime of the server it ends up paying for itself several times over.

Q: But hey GTS ... aren't you Big Daddy Warbucks all doing this gig full time?
A: Well yea, I do it full time, but Big Daddy Warbucks I aint. I'm under the US median household income (go Google it and be shocked how low it is), and not by a small margin. It's a labor of love, and nothing worth doing is ever easy.

THAT BEING SAID ... Yea, I do have the cash to pay for it, because I practice my Spin Room fiscal gospel. But it is quite the kick in the nuts, so like we did with the last server (which has carried us a pretty impressive FIVE YEARS now), I will open it up to donations if you wish to help. Just like last time ... denote which school you root for with your donation if you choose to donate. The two schools with the highest combined total will get to vote on and name the two nodes of the new server. Last time the winners were Rice (the Database server is named "Sammy" ... and if you're in Skunkworks you'll see all the internal monitoring lists and tracks it as "Sammy") and Memphis (the Apache server is named "Pierre" after Memphis ... and it is also named and tracked as such in Skunkworks.) However ... unlike previous times donors will not get added to the donor user group and get ad free for life. That group is closed and only for people who helped us when we absolutely depended upon it and we were much more of a fledgling site.

Q: But what if my team doesn't have an active team board?
A: We'll count it toward your conference BBS.

Here is the link to donate. There is no set amount. Anything from your Starbucks latte tomorrow ($3) to full on making it rain if you're Big Daddy Warbucks is heartily appreciated. Be sure to send me a PM telling me what email it will show up as and what school you root for (if you don't see a comment field on PayPal allowing you to enter who you root for.)

Donate: http://csnbbs.com/misc.php?page=newserver

Leaderboard (Aggregate ... this is what counts)

(First place: Name a server node. Second place: Name a server node. Third place: Name the interconnect switch.)

1) Appalachian State: $650 (If they drop below the top two, they get added back into SunBeltbbs aggregate)
2) Rice: $580
3) Northern Illinois: $450
4) ACCbbs: $435 ($150 Maryland, $125 Syracuse, $100 Pitt, $25 Notre Dame, $25 Georgia Tech, $10 Louisville)
5) Memphis: $405
6) Cincinnati: $253.73
7) James Madison: $165
8) SunBeltbbs: $145 ($95 stAte, $50 Georgia Southern)
9) Kent State: $131.55
10) AACbbs: $121.25 ($30 ECU, $21.25 Temple, $20 USF, $50 UCF)
11) CUSAbbs: $120 ($50 UTEP, $50 UNCC, $20 USM)
12) Old Dominion: $115
13) Big12bbs: $100 ($100 West Virginia)
14) UAB: $65
15) ASunbbs: $40 ($20 ETSU, $20 Mercer)
16T) Toledo: $25
16T) Western Michigan: $25
18) B1Gbbs: $20 ($20 Rutgers)
18) BigEastbbs: $15 ($15 St Johns)
19) SECbbs: $5 ($5 Missouri)
(Pending confirmation): $50
= $3916.53

Final cost of server including S&H: $3,884.82

100% funded!!

Donation that put it over the top: ballen - Memphis


Appalachian State has won the naming rights to one new server node.
Rice has won the naming rights to one new server node.
Northern Illinois has won the naming rights to the new switch.





Naming Leaderboard (Raw By Team):
App State (SunBeltbbs): $650
Rice: $580
Northern Illinois: $450
Memphis: $405
Cincinnati: $253.73
Maryland (ACCbbs? B1Gbbs?): $150
James Madison: $165
Kent State: $125
Syracuse (ACCbbs): $125
Old Dominion: $115
Pitt (ACCbbs): $100
West Virginia (Big12bbs): $100
stAte (SunBeltbbs): $95
UAB: $65
Georgia Southern (SunBeltbbs): $50
UTEP (CUSAbbs): $50
UCF (AACbbs): $50
Charlotte (CUSAbbs): $50
(Pending confirmation): $50
East Carolina (AACbbs): $30
Notre Dame (ACCbbs): $25
Georgia Tech (ACCbbs): $25
Western Michigan: $25
Toledo: $25
Temple (AACbbs): $21.25
South Florida (AACbbs): $20
Rutgers (B1Gbbs): $20
Southern Miss (CUSAbbs): $20
Mercer (ASunbbs): $20
ETSU (ASunbbs): $20
St John's (Big East): $15
Louisville (ACCbbs): $10
Missouri (SECbbs): $5
(Pending confirmation): $50


Leaderboard (Conference Affiliation Only):
CUSAbbs: $880 ($580 Rice, $100, ODU, $80 ODU, $50 UTEP, $50 UNCC, $20 USM
SunBeltbbs: $795 ($650 App State, $95 stAte, $50 Georgia Southern)
AACbbs: $779.98 ($405 Memphis, $253.73 Cincinnati, $30 ECU, $21.25 Temple, $20 USF, $50 UCF)
MACbbs: $631.55 ($450 NIU, $131.55 Kent State, $25 Toledo, $25 WMU)
ACCbbs: $435 ($150 Maryland, $100 Pitt, $25 Notre Dame, $125 Syracuse, $25 Georgia Tech, $10 Louisville)
CAAbbs: $165 ($165 JMU)
Big12bbs: $100 ($100 West Virginia)
ASunbbs: $30 ($20 ETSU, $20 Mercer)
BigEastbbs: $15 ($15 St Johns)
SECbbs: $5 ($5 Missouri)

Atleast you saved $7!

I was hoping to find a % off coupon ... even just 5% ...

Yea, that's a pretty stiff tab, but you did get that coupon saving. So that's kinda nice.

I'm trying to go to the posted cite and this is all I get:

Quote:Sorry — your last action could not be completed

If you were making a purchase or sending money, we recommend that you check both your PayPal account and your email for a transaction confirmation after 30 minutes.

If you came to this page from another website, please return to that site (don't use your browser's Back button) and restart your activity.

If you came from PayPal's website, click the PayPal logo in the upper-left corner to return to our home page and restart your activity. You might have to log in again.

Oopsie. Link updated.

Paypal link doesn't work. Tried it several times.

Quote:Sorry — your last action could not be completed
If you were making a purchase or sending money, we recommend that you check both your PayPal account and your email for a transaction confirmation after 30 minutes.

If you came to this page from another website, please return to that site (don't use your browser's Back button) and restart your activity.

If you came from PayPal's website, click the PayPal logo in the upper-left corner to return to our home page and restart your activity. You might have to log in again.

Too slow on my part. You got it. Works now.

done. it's not much, but hope it helps!

go bearcats!

Whatever it takes to keep it up. Disabling guests. Disabling tapatalk. It's already pretty ugly under the hood.

(05-09-2013 06:58 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

I was hoping to find a % off coupon ... even just 5% ...

Superbiiz's % off coupons (at least on whichever e-mail newsletter of theirs I'm subscribed to) usually max out at $10 or $15, so not too much lost there.

Smudge: Nope ... if everybody deleted their ancient PMs that would help a little ... but I can achieve the bump from archiving old posts on boards and do it in bulk relatively quickly, whereas it will take you forever.

So ... to get a little bit technical (but keep it down to earth) ....

All the posts on the site are in one giant table. Imagine it as an Excel spreadsheet of doom. If you have a forum that has been active a long time, it can have posts all the way back to 2007 ... 2005 ... 2003 even. For MyBB to even serve up to you the count (this forum has xxxx threads and yyyy posts) it has to scan from THE OLDEST post to the newest. That can be a 5,000,000 ... 7,500,000 ... or more row scan. YIKES! That's why I've been taking old posts and punting them to archive boards which are buried deep enough that MyBB doesn't issue the listing/count commands unless you're really on the archive board. And then it will still be slow ... but it's no biggie because how many people on the site are viewing archive threads? 0.0001% of daily traffic maybe? No problem. So the solution to that is doable on my end. But our big bottleneck is the apache webserver just doesn't have the grunt to keep up when the board gets going.

GTS: I NEED WARP SPEED IN 5 SECONDS OR WE'RE ALL DEAD.
Server: I can't dooooo eeeeeeet captain. I DON'T ... HAVE ... THE POWAHHHHH.

(05-09-2013 07:45 PM)Tymanh99 Wrote:  smudge your 24 posts are a bandwidth hog bro

Would it help to delete our attachments?

(05-09-2013 08:47 PM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  Would it help to delete our attachments?

Not really. I have tools to prune those. Your ancient PMs are the one thing I have no easy tool to prune .... and really it's only a ever so slight marginal help.

BOTD eating up space?

(05-09-2013 08:50 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:47 PM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  Would it help to delete our attachments?

Not really. I have tools to prune those. Your ancient PMs are the one thing I have no easy tool to prune .... and really it's only a ever so slight marginal help.

Well I deleted 5 pages of PMs and a few hundred KB of attachments.

No need to keep them anyways.

(05-09-2013 08:50 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:47 PM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  Would it help to delete our attachments?

Not really. I have tools to prune those. Your ancient PMs are the one thing I have no easy tool to prune .... and really it's only a ever so slight marginal help.

If we post pictures of girls with smaller boobs will that help the bandwidth issue?

(05-09-2013 08:56 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:50 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(05-09-2013 08:47 PM)HuskieJohn Wrote:  Would it help to delete our attachments?

Not really. I have tools to prune those. Your ancient PMs are the one thing I have no easy tool to prune .... and really it's only a ever so slight marginal help.

If we post pictures of girls with smaller boobs will that help the bandwidth issue?

No, but it might make you more comfortable with your manhood.

HEYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Besides, there aren't any more scantily clad women around here after Google got angry. Right? RIGHT... :)