Well, as most of you know by now we've had a major setback. After spending a great deal of time and resources getting the server running smoothly with new hardware and a new router, something went wrong. The current "primary" hardware simply won't boot. Because this site is hosted remotely, it's very difficult to diagnose let alone fix. Unfortunately the person looking after the server (as a favour to all of us) simply doesn't have the time to investigate.
As a result, we are back to running on the "backup" hardware on my home connection. That means a few things:
- We no longer have backup hardware ready - the next crash takes us completely off the air.
- Because of the nature of the connection, some Army.ca e-mail (such as to AOL accounts) may not get through. This means people registering from these accounts may never see their registration notices. I will try to manually forward these as much as is practical.
- We have lost all postings and user accounts from Sunday, May 9th to Wednesday May 12th.
- We currently exceed the bandwidth limit for my home connection by 6 to 7 times the allowed limit. This means that the site may need to be taken offline again from time to time, or I may have live off donations. :(
Clearly, this is a temporary solution and I'm investigating the following options to get us up and running again in a more permanent fashion:
- Fix the hardware and ship it back to the current host. That connection is free, so this is pretty appealing (no need to beg for donations) however the problems associated with managing a remote site have been very limiting lately. This also means that the defective hardware has to be shipped to me, fixed, then shipped back, which is likely to take 3 weeks minimum.
- Obtain a new connection and probably new hardware to increase stability. I've been on a holding list for over a month for a new net connection that would help out here, but Bell hasn't actually enabled me yet. Until they do I'm on my current (limited) connection. The new connection would cost more per month than the existing options, but would allow me to host from my house, where I can quickly address any faults. This option may be "donation driven" as I've run out of "out of pocket" money to keep the site going for the next little while.
The bottom line: things are going to be tough for a while yet, but I'm working as quickly as I can to get things back in order. As I learn more, I'll be sure to post it here.
Thanks for your patience through all this.
Cheers
Mike
