Your subscription/ad money at work..

[Steven P. Administrators]

Many of our long term visitors will know that we've had some slowdowns recently on the site, also without the obvious issues of upgrading the forums.

 

We've determined that we need to replace at least one database server that we bought five years ago, so we'll be ordering a new one next week. It will be a new 128GB server. Costing $5400 before any additional discount from Dell (typically another 10%) and includes 2 6 core Xeons (vs the 1 4 core in the current db machine) we're also going with an additional two SSD drives (as well as two sata drives) and may need to replace at least one or two Apache servers, although the old db server could be repurposed for this too. The Apache servers are even older than the db server that will be replaced :p

 

I want to give thanks to Kris Kwilas at Stardock for organising this, and Brad Wardell for pushing through this much needed upgrade as well as Dave and Marcel for endlessly tweaking our current setup to allow Neowin to run as smoothly as it can despite the obvious need for the upgrade.

 

Without going into too many details, we've had to turn a few things off (mostly just for staff, not our members) in order to keep the site up and running for our visitors. As with any site, we have outgrown our current hardware and well, we're doing something about that.

 

So I want to give thanks to our loyal visitors for whitelisting Neowin or buying a Tier 2 subscription, this is where your money goes, to make your visit here more worthwhile in the long run.

 

Also thanks to our staff who have been very patient throughout the upgrades, and things breaking/going missing in the background.

[n_K]

You've been running the entire neowin db off a single 4 core server? The fact it's had only a few slowdowns is pretty remarkable!
Congrats.

[V-Tech]

You are doing a great job guy's and replacing one server to make things better is great news....

 

Thank you....

 

Happy to contribute as much as I can :)

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

If any of you have thought about buying a subscription before: Now would be the perfect time. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

You've been running the entire neowin db off a single 4 core server? The fact it's had only a few slowdowns is pretty remarkable!

Congrats.

No mate, we have two db servers, the newest one is something like two and a half years old, one does the forums and the other one does the news although i'm not sure which db the oldest server does.

[Phouchg]

Consider another 10% off - send the bill to Rappeh :p

[theyarecomingforyou]

Consider another 10% off - send the bill to Rappeh :p

Well, he probably does account for 50% of Neowin's forum posts and bandwidth usage.  :laugh:

[+Cryton Subscriber²]

If any of you have thought about buying a subscription before: Now would be the perfect time. 

Link?

[+John Teacake MVC]

Honestly I have never experienced Site Slowdowns at all. But good work guys keep it up!

[+Frank B. Subscriber²]

Link?

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?app=subscriptions

[Steven P. Administrators]

Link?

Hidden in the "more" menu :p https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?app=subscriptions

 

Ah beaten to it, thanks Meph.

[Mystic Mungis]

Link?

https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?app=subscriptions

 

EDIT: Ohh whoops, looks like we have a convoy on our hands :p

[+Cryton Subscriber²]

Thanks all :)

[_neutrino Veteran]

always good to see the hardware behind the story get an update as well, also if you get me the specs of the server you want i might be able to work with my contact at dell and see if i can get you any further discounts.

[+Anarkii Subscriber²]

And you better take my money again when my current sub ends Mr Steven or there will be hell to pay! *shakes fists*
:P

On a serious note, im glad that my sub money is going to a worthy cause :) 

[SuperKid]

Apache is so power hungry, if you dumped Apache and used an alternative like Nginx you would get so much more out of the current hardware for the web server. Obviously the database is usually what causes the most slow downs to a website so the upgrade on the database server is probably going to increase the site speed loads! :)

[Marshall Veteran]

I'll sub again Steve, gimme a couple days (Y)

[John Callaham Veteran]

It's always fascinating to read about the inner workings on a site like this, even if you work for it :)

[V-Tech]

Somewhere deep deep Inside me i was hoping/wishing i was paying for :pint:  :pint: for the staff here......... 

I guess upgrading the servers is o.k as well  :rofl:  :rofl:

[ANON86364]

Happy to contribute to a site like Neowin  :)

[dead.cell]

Subscribed. You guys took care of me when I literally had $10 in the bank, as I had won a free subscription through a contest. :P

 

That being said, yes, I'm broke again, but that's because I've got a good job and just dropped money on a new car.

 

So thank you to all the staff out there who bust their butts and keep this site operational. Much love.

 

:beer:

[djdanster]

Fantastic! So what's the downtime expected? :P.

 

Seriously great news though! Glad I've subscribed for a number of years, and thanks to Stardock!

[BeerFan]

So nice to see updates like this... thank you!!!  I've resubscribed.

[SharpGreen]

Can I have the old server? :P

[Orange]

I need to buy again, Will do the Tier 2 this time.

 

I've brought Tier 1 - Enhanced Service twice now.