SERVER MIGRATION

[Telos]

ALL;

Thanks for hanging in with us over the last few weeks of poking and prodding.

ACTION

We are moving the site to a new server overnight (0100 EST - NOV 23). There is no expected impact to services or downtime. We are moving the site to a new virtual system on a large provider. Many server level security implementations have been moved to the perimeter (Cloudflare) and a more robust server specification has been set up that anticipates community growth but still saves a substantial amount of money every month (over 65%).

PREPARATION

There is no need for Members to do anything prior to or after this migration.

OUTCOME

The site has already gotten faster and you will see some more performance improvements and better responsiveness over the next week or so as we tune caching.

See you on the other side.

T

[RangeBob]

[humor]

"Migration"

Will the site be flying further south for the winter ?

[Zinilin]

We are moving the site to a new virtual system on a large provider.

What is that providers position of the private ownership and use of firearms?

Sites have been canceled on 'large providers' when the 'large provider' disagrees with the politics of the site; or the conduct of some or any of its members; or has a terms of service that requires 'compelled speech'; or opposes the open discussion on topics that may be related to medication, weather, dysphoria or multiculturalism.

Is it possible for your chosen 'large provider' to cancel us if we speak freely?

[SwissArmyMan]

We are moving the site to a new virtual system on a large provider.

What is that providers position of the private ownership and use of firearms?

Sites have been canceled on 'large providers' when the 'large provider' disagrees with the politics of the site; or the conduct of some or any of its members; or has a terms of service that requires 'compelled speech'; or opposes the open discussion on topics that may be related to medication, weather, dysphoria or multiculturalism.

Is it possible for your chosen 'large provider' to cancel us if we speak freely?

Amen to that.

[Telos]

We are moving the site to a new virtual system on a large provider.

What is that providers position of the private ownership and use of firearms?

Sites have been canceled on 'large providers' when the 'large provider' disagrees with the politics of the site; or the conduct of some or any of its members; or has a terms of service that requires 'compelled speech'; or opposes the open discussion on topics that may be related to medication, weather, dysphoria or multiculturalism.

Is it possible for your chosen 'large provider' to cancel us if we speak freely?

Excellent question in these days of "we picked our infrastructure because its cheap and we don't need to support it".

Our server hardware, in Canada, in our rack (colocated), encrypted down to the disk. The large provider is the internet company we chose to service our server based on their EULA.

Some background on me/us: https://telosalpha.com

I have been shooting since I was 12. I started Telos Alpha to work exclusively with firearms companies to overcome the rampant prejudicial treatment of anyone in the firearms vertical. We moved a ton of people off Shopify when they lost their minds a few years back, and regularly deal with firearms and sporting goods companies getting kicked of their card processing.

Now, is it possible that some anti-firearm entity can grab a account here and listen in. Yep. If determined enough there isn't any way for us to stop them in a manner that wouldn't cost more that site could handle. My personal approach is to keep it lite and hobby centric on D-Boards, and have the harder, more "risky" conversations on other platforms that are easier or even capable of being locked down.

FYI. -the migration went perfectly. 3 seconds of downtime.

[Camo tung]

From my desk-top it appears to load and navigate faster, all "seat of the pants feel" of course. It hasn't downgraded so that's a huge plus!

[SwissArmyMan]

Sounds too good to be true.

[Stealthfall]

While it does sound too good to be true modern servers are far more powerful and efficient than even just 3 years ago.

I have a couple homelab servers and in retrospect should have just built one rather than use decommissioned hardware since using off the shelf components partially because of the vast improvements in power or performance efficiencies and easier to get parts since most 2.5inch drives are very limited in capacity and oddball parts that are sometimes hard to come by without a service contract with HP, Dell, Etc.

My current desktop has an AMD 12 core processor. Compare to my 12 year old server with two 6 core processors and compared to my 8 year old server with two 10 core CPUs that consume up to a third more power for 3 times the capability - compared to the older server. Modern server chips are rolling off with various product lines running between 8 to 128 cores per CPU with much more memory lanes and external device connectivity depending on needs and budget.

Performance wise my desktop (reconfigured in early 2023) is a bit more than roughly twice as powerful for less power input as my twin 10 core server despite having 8 fewer cores. And if I turned off all but 2 CPU cores the desktop would be roughly as powerful as my older server

[6MT]

Is the new server the reason I keep getting logged out? And it takes 4 or 5 tries to just get logged on?

[Camo tung]

I'm getting that pesky cloudflare asking if I'm human then everything stops. Refresh and it takes me back to where I was (Post Quick Reply). Not using a VPN.

[RangeBob]

Is the new server the reason I keep getting logged out? And it takes 4 or 5 tries to just get logged on?

I'm not getting that.

I'm getting that pesky cloudflare asking if I'm human then everything stops. Refresh and it takes me back to where I was (Post Quick Reply). Not using a VPN.

About 1 in 20 posts, particularly long complicated ones, I get a "leave site" message followed by cloudflare asking me to "Verify that you are human".
Usually it works out fine.
Every couple of days when cloudflare asks if I'm human, it ends up losing the post.
Sometimes I can hit "back" and copy my text to save it in case of failure, and sometimes I can't -- but if I send the "human" checkbox going "back" is no longer an option.



EDIT: I got the "Verify that you are human" on this post. Worked fine.

[Camo tung]

About 1 in 20 posts, particularly long complicated ones, I get a "leave site" message followed by cloudflare asking me to "Verify that you are human".
Usually it works out fine.
Every couple of days when cloudflare asks if I'm human, it ends up losing the post.
Sometimes I can hit "back" and copy my text to save it in case of failure, and sometimes I can't -- but if I send the "human" checkbox going "back" is no longer an option.

That pretty sums up my experience as it has happened more than once.

Side note: Issues like this are why I asked Telos whether he would be opening a dedicated inbox so we could forward these concerns directly instead of him having to search all threads for mentions of exceptions.

[Camo tung]

That pretty sums up my experience as it has happened more than once.

Side note: Issues like this are why I asked Telos whether he would be opening a dedicated inbox so we could forward these concerns directly instead of him having to search all threads for mentions of exceptions.

Edit: Cloudflare flagged this post too but ultimately let it pass.

[RangeBob]

Another special character.

This frenchman's name "Sauve" ends with an "e" with an acute accent.

It comes out as Sauv? .

[Zinilin]

Another special character.

This frenchman's name "Sauve" ends with an "e" with an acute accent.

It comes out as Sauv? .

Perhaps this server is not using UTF-8 (ISO-8859).