Hi all, This Saturday Freelists will be upgrading their lists server hardware. All Freelists groups will therefore be out of operation for most of Saturday, but hopefully will be back up and running towards the end of the day. Please bear in mind that the Servers are based in America (East Coast I believe) which is 5 hours behind GMT. Work is expected to start between 1 & 2pm GMT, and so in some places the lists may not be restored until Sunday. All the best, George Bell. -----Original Message----- From: freelists-news-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:freelists-news-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Madden Sent: 18 January 2005 04:15 To: freelists-news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [Freelists News] FreeLists to get an upgrade this weekend === - The FreeLists Newsletter - You're receiving this email because you are subscribed to the FreeLists Newsletter, a newsletter sent out to all FreeLists list owners. It contains important updates about changes to FreeLists services. For subscription information, please see the bottom of this email. Administrative contact: weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx === It's been just over four years since our last hardware upgrade (//www.freelists.org/archives/freelists-news/11-2001/ms g00000.html) and our need for it has never been greater. Since 11/2001, we've been running on a custom-built server with 512MB RAM, two PIII/800 cpu's, and some fairly slow storage. The fact that we've been able to continue running on such ancient hardware is, in my opinion, a testament to the quality of the Open Source software we so heavily depend on. Nonetheless, as we've grown, demand for resources has gradually outstripped the capabilities of our hardware. For several months now, I've been researching and shopping for a server that will carry FreeLists for the next few years. While there are several servers that make up the backend here, there's just one that does 90% of the work, so it's got to be a performant, reliable box. I nearly went with Dell for their simplicity, my experience with them (we've already got an 1850 here), and the fact that they're so cheap. Their lack of support for the AMD Opteron CPU (far better than Intel's 64-bit offering) dropped them from the running. Matrix to the rescue: I was put in touch with a nearby VAR called Matrix Integration (http://www.matrixintegration.com), a big HP reseller. While I can't go into detail on the specifics, let's just say this upgrade wouldn't have been possible without them. Their sales people really went to bat for us and put us into a server I never thought we'd be able to afford. </plug> We'll be moving to a roomy HP DL585 with 2 Opteron 850's and 2GB RAM. The server also provides for upgradeability -- I can drop in two more CPU's and another 62GB of memory if we ever need it. So here's the plan: We'll be doing the migration on Saturday the 22nd, starting at about 9am. It's a complicated migration and I do expect there to be bumps along the way, but I plan to have everything operational by mid-afternoon. During that time, of course, FreeLists' services will be unavailable. The rest of the weekend will be available to finding and ironing out any remaining problems that crop up. Any questions or concerns? Please don't hesitate to ask. John -- # John Madden weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx # FreeLists: Free mailing lists for all: //www.freelists.org # Linux, Apache, Perl and C: All the best things in life are free! ======================= The FreeLists Newsletter Keeping you in touch with the lastest FreeLists news - For subscription info and list modes, please see: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/lsg2.cgi - List webpage: //www.freelists.org/webpage/freelists-news - Administrative contact: weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ======================= This Message has been scanned for viruses by McAfee Groupshield. ** To leave the list, send a message to:- ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ** and in the Subject line type ** unsubscribe ** For other list commands such as vacation mode, send a message, to ** access-uk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the Subject:- faq