Ok, so thanks to everyone who donated on my birthday (a total of $221); it was very much appreciated. We managed to hit and pass our target by an extra 19%, and so the total amount raised is $547. I have gone ahead and purchased the dedicated server on the annual lease (meaning we waived the setup fee). The invoice for this purchase is attached for your perusal, and I've added some explanation of the costs.
So, how is the new server different from the current? Well, the current one is a VPS, (Virtual Private Server) meaning we share one server with a few other clients, each having a virtual server running on the one machine. Our new server is a dedicated server, meaning that our machine is just ours. It's dedicated to hosting our website 24/7.
In terms of specifications, the current server had a Dual Core AMD Opteron, 1GB of RAM (memory), and 20GB of hard disk space. We now have an Intel Celeron (2.66 GHz), 2GB of RAM, and 500 GB of hard disk space. All for a much cheaper price than what I was paying for the current server, made even cheaper by the discounts we got.
I'll be hopefully setting it all up this weekend, but it might take me a few weeks to get everything working (exams, revision, etc). This server will remain up until around the 20th though, so everything should have been switched by then. I'll post more updates when to expect downtime as the site migrates.
All we have left to do is to come up with a name for the server. It needs to be: all lowercase, only letters and numbers (no spaces), and something cool or witty. Make your suggestions in the thread!
So, how is the new server different from the current? Well, the current one is a VPS, (Virtual Private Server) meaning we share one server with a few other clients, each having a virtual server running on the one machine. Our new server is a dedicated server, meaning that our machine is just ours. It's dedicated to hosting our website 24/7.
In terms of specifications, the current server had a Dual Core AMD Opteron, 1GB of RAM (memory), and 20GB of hard disk space. We now have an Intel Celeron (2.66 GHz), 2GB of RAM, and 500 GB of hard disk space. All for a much cheaper price than what I was paying for the current server, made even cheaper by the discounts we got.
I'll be hopefully setting it all up this weekend, but it might take me a few weeks to get everything working (exams, revision, etc). This server will remain up until around the 20th though, so everything should have been switched by then. I'll post more updates when to expect downtime as the site migrates.
All we have left to do is to come up with a name for the server. It needs to be: all lowercase, only letters and numbers (no spaces), and something cool or witty. Make your suggestions in the thread!
