The Software, Construction and Installation
This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.
The SoftwareMany of you have been wondering what software it is that powers the Amdmb.com website. With the pushing of my buddy Warren, we long ago made the switch from our Windows 2000/Cold Fusion/MS SQL Server platform to the much improved Linux/PHP/MySQL setup.
The initial reason for making the switch was based a lot on my need to cut costs. Upgrading the Cold Fusion version and MS SQL Server versions was going to cost thousands, and I definitely didn’t have that kind of money to do it nor did I have a larger corporation hosting my site for me that could do it at a discounted rate. When I decided to go to the new platform, it took a lot of time to change the programming language, but the money we spent on the server software was only a few hundred for a couple copies of the latest Red Hat distribution.
Even now, with this latest server upgrade, we upgraded from Red Hat 7.1 to Red Hat 7.3 and the total cost of the server software was in the few hundreds. Have you priced an upgrade from Windows NT to Windows 2000 server? My guess is you won’t find it to be a few hundred dollars for three servers.
The Construction
I have a few photos from the construction and of all the hardware before I started to build the servers. It was fairly standard and an easy task to do, just as building any other PC would have been. The only exception was that extra special care was taken not to static-electrocute anything. 🙂
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After the construction was finished, the three machines were left running and doing stress testing for two weeks on the test bench to ensure the systems would be 100% stable upon putting them up live. The three systems passed the tests with flying colors and I setup an appointment with our collocation facility to have the servers installed.
The Host and Installation
All of the Amdmb.com servers are hosted by the fine folks at Intent.net. Located in Louisville, KY, about an hour’s drive from my home, they are the best host that we have been with yet. They are small enough to treat you right and big enough to have all the power and speed you need. There is nothing worse than a conglomerate company that only knows you by your invoice numbers trying to help you out when your servers crash and you are in a tight spot.
I drove the three servers down to the collocation facility and after a quick 6 hours of installation and database moving, we had the servers up and running perfectly. The staff at Intent.net was extremely helpful and forgiving, even supplying me with beverages during the installation process. 🙂 If you have any hosting needs or questions that you want answered, head on over the Intent.net and give them a call.
