The New Server (and it’s nightmare)

There’s a checklist of things that have to happen before I kick off my new web series, “Sex With Davis” (no, it’s not about having sex with me, it’s about the science and facts of sex), and a checklist of stuff that has to happen for my business.  One area that they overlap is web performance on MidnightRyder.org (IE, this site).  I’m also taking on a project that was going to need a lot more horsepower, and I could save them money by sharing a much larger server, along with distributing out the database to another server setup.

My old server was a 4 core, 4GB of RAM machine that had been in service for two or three years when I ordered the new beast.  The new one is a nice 12 core, 16GB of RAM, 240 GB SSD drive.  It friggin smokes.

BUT… it’s amazing what things can go wrong, and how much of a nightmare it can turn into.  At the same time I ordered the new web server, I ordered a new VPS setup for the databases for all the sites.  My existing server was on the west coast, so my new database VPS got set up on the west coast, too.  Except, the new web server, in all it’s 12 core sexiness, was on the east coast.  Yeah, that was a minor disaster.

One site didn’t move over properly – and, unfortunately, it was a high-traffic site with an event coming up (the Great Plains Ren Fest).  Something happened with /tmp directory permissions for that site, and suddenly people couldn’t order tickets.  At the same time, WordPress 4.3 came out, and the theme wasn’t fully compatible with it.  And, since it was a new machine, it got a new version of PHP (the language that runs the site on the back end), which wasn’t compatible with part of the shopping system anyways!  So, along with all the other work I have going on, I had to redo the theme, troubleshoot the problems with the servers, etc., etc., etc.  What a pain.  I ended up missing three days of workouts thanks to some very late nights (since most of that sort of work has to be done during off-peak hours.)  And there’s still more to be done with the Ren Fest site, but it’s up and rolling the way it should be, speed wise 🙂

There is another important site that’s still offline at the moment – my company site, Midnight Ryder Technologies, is offline until I make some DNS updates.  Of course, that one is at the bottom of my list of to-do’s.

But, it is done.  Oh, and how wonderful this sucker is.  Fast.  Jimmy-John’s sort of fast.  It may have been a bit of a nightmare getting to this point, but oh it’s worth it!  (Too bad it increases my monthly overhead a bit, even with someone else paying for part of the server space.)

Also means I can blog again – I’ve had a couple of posts I’ve wanted to make (The Tale of 30,000 Crunches, among other stories) and hopefully in the next couple of days I’ll get around to boring people with them 😉