Cutting Over to a New Host - DOWNTIME IMMINENT

Guys, as we continue to deal with site and rating engagement growth, we will be cutting over to a new host today.

Currently our architecture looks like this: one pretty good database server, one very fast web server, one OK web server, one weak web server.

As of later tonight, our architecture will look like this: One very good database server, five very fast web servers.

We expect a noticeable improvement in performance, and of course, the ability to handle several times the amount of traffic that we can today.

We're going to be down for about six hours while we transfer our massive database to the new host.

Server Update

Well, I bit the bullet and put in an order for about the most powerful Web server on the planet. It's only been on the market for a few months, and is supposed to be rocket fast. I asked my web host about what kind of upgrade I can expect over what we have in place on the Web server now. Here's his response:

The difference is insane, think VW Bug to Ferrari. The AMD 2400MP was good when it was new, but it's nothing compared to this setup. The QuadCore can process 32 times the information per cycle, with 8 more cycles per given period, not to
mention it has over double the cache per processor.

So we should be talking significant, visible improvement. The pages should be snapping fast once we get this new box in there.

The parts should arrive on Friday, and we should have the new box in early next week. I'm pretty excited.

In the mean time, Google has kindly slowed the rate that their crawler is hitting RIA pages. This has given us a reprieve, and there shouldn't be any significant problems until we can get the new box in.