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Recent months I have been working through a checklist to do a big (once every 5 years kind) of upgrade for Club Log's hardware.
I am currently looking at doing this after the Bouvet expedition (plus a few weeks) so that there is no chance of disrupting their trip, which will use Club Log. That expedition is the top priority of every DXer in the world, so I shall be dedicating my attention to their needs until they are home safe and the logs are all backed up in a hundred places. hi!
After that, I need to pull the Club Log primary hardware out to replace the CPUs, upgrade the memory to 384GB and update the solid state drives which are getting a bit worn out. As part of this, I'll be replacing the NVMe device with a new Intel Optane card. As this will need the hardware to be back in my workshop for a while, I'll temporarily move Club Log onto the Google Compute Cloud.
The GC cloud is (as of mid-December) powering the backups of Club Log, such as its database replica, copies of all the OQRS info etc. so that there is always a second copy. This costs around £400/month and in my view it's worth it. However, moving the primary server into the cloud would run up such a huge bill (probably getting on for £1000/month or more) that it can only be done for a short time (perhaps for example if there was a major failure on the main server). I think this fits the bill for the hardware update I have in mind, though. So, the hope is that I will migrate Club Log onto a high-end (temporary) server in the GC cloud, and then drive over and physically retrieve the switched-off hardware for the upgrades. I have a very good supplier for the exotic parts wanted, which should come to around £5000. A few weeks later I'll be in a position to put everything back onto the updated system and then migrate one more time (off GC and back onto the physical server). A bit fussy but it will avoid buying two servers.
There is bound to be a little bit of stopping and starting involved on each of the two change overs. The main reason is that the database must be kept absolutely pristine and not allowed to differ at any stage of migration, so I will take the safe/sane option of stopping Club Log for the duration of any database switches. I will post status pages explaining when these events occur, but I will also post a schedule of dates ahead of time when I have decided. I'll try and make it extremely clear what is planned, and when.
As ever, these costs are covered by donations, which is amazing to me. It is all I can do to say thank you, one more time, to everyone who helps Club Log. You'll notice the difference when it's done!
vy 73 Michael G7VJR |
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