I am pleased to announce that enough money was raised to purchase a new server. I submitted the order last night. Thanks to the generosity of many Stovebolters, we were able to order a server configured as follows (the geeks will love this):
3.2GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon processor
2x2MB Cache, 1066MHz Front Side Bus
2 GB of DDR2, 533MHZ DIMM memory
Perc 5i RAID Integrated Controler
(2) 73GB 15K RPM Serial Attached SCSI drives
(2) Broadcomm Gigabet Onboard Ethernet cards
Rack Mount server with Dual Redundant Power Supplies
Dell Remote Access Card, 5th Generation
3 Years of Hardware Support
What this means is that the new server should be faster and more reliable than the one we're using now, and if anything ever happens to it, I can get to it remotely, while I'm at work.
In addition, it will allow me to offload some of the work to the old server as well as use each server as a backup for the other one. This should mean almost zero downtime and complete redundancy of backups, ensuring that no one's posts or accounts would ever be lost again.
Of course I will be installing FreeBSD 6.1 on the server when it comes in, and I will announce when the new server is in place and in service.
Again, a big thanks to every one of you that dug deep in your wallets to support the site. It's enough that you participate in the community and provide your knowledge for free to others. Giving money to support this project was going above and beyond the call of duty.
The Stovebolt Staff thanks you from the bottom of our hearts.
