We've just invested in another new server - but this time it's one that works. For anyone that's interested, it's a Quad Core Intel Xeon, with 4G of RAM, 2 x 250G SATA II Hard Drives. To say it flies would be an understatement. It's housed in Seattle, so anyone in that general area should get their eyebrows burned off with the speed :-)
It's got a number of extra features that mean future upgrades will be a lot smoother and if something goes wrong I can access the machine from here in Australia just as if I was sitting at the keyboard and screen in Seattle. This means I can check BIOS settings, reload the operating system if need be, and do just about anything as if the machine were housed in my office. I can't of course replace defective hardware, but I can even turn the machine on and off!
In the future if need be, we can add dedicated database servers, load balancing and all sorts of goodies to improve performance and reliability. Having said that, we won't need to yet - this is a future growth thing!
But all that means we have to make another move - to a new provider (the current budget provider doesn't do any of the enhanced management stuff).
So - tomorrow (Monday, Australian Eastern Standard Time (GMT+10)) the DearDiary service will be moved to the new server. You will see some outages and freakish things happening again. Panic ye not - it will all be good. All the other sites hosted by Kabarty have already moved - DearDiary and Hamipiks are the last to go.
Steve and Rose.