We couldn't wait any longer so today I ordered drives and memory to upgrade our three servers that do most of the work of running BigCloset and other sites so important to our community.
It cost $840 dollars and we will have a small shipping cost to send some RAM we already had and another cost to pay the people at the server farm to help us install the hard drives, SSDs and memory. Total will be very close to $1000.
I must emphasize that this is not a permanent fix. This is to keep us from having another meltdown but it should keep us running healthy for two to four months, time for us to implement our long term plan which is to upgrade the machines themselves so that we can keep running for two to four years.
Most of the stuff will be there by Monday or Tuesday. We're going to start getting ready over the weekend. Sites will be going down, usually for only hours at a time while we move things off of Eva (miscellaneous TG sites) and onto Magda (BC) and Jolie (mail, TGFiction.net, more TG sites and some rental sites). Then starting on Tuesday or Wednesday, we will upgrade Eva, install BC there and get BC running and stable. Doing it this way, BC will be down probably not more than 4 to 12 hours but maybe as long as 20 or 30. Better than four days. :)
Then we will upgrade Magda and Jolie and sites on those machines will be down, maybe a whole day but hopefully not.
But $1000 dollars is a big hit on my credit cards. Fortunately, we have got some donations in in the last few days. Nothing like a good scare, I guess. :) But we hadn't budgeted for this much to be spent this soon. We got some good deals and saved some money that would have been spent eventually. But for now, I'm going to raise the Hatbox target for the month of April to $3000. If we don't make the $3000 before I announce the May targets, some of it may have to roll over. I'm going to update the Hatbox box to show how much has come in in the last few days which is about as much as what we spent.
Someday soon, we will announce a longer term fund raising to finance what we really need to insure the future of these website so important to our community.
Hugs to all and many, many thanks,
Erin, Piper, Cat, Sephrena and our volunteers
Comments
Titans of BC
You are Titans one and all. If there was a female term for Atlas you all would deserve it because our world rests upon your shoulders. Thank you.
Huggles
Michele
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Female Atlas
Atlia? Atlay? Atlissa? Atlaia? Atleia?
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
Atlantides
The Atlantides were the daughters of Atlas. Close enough I guess. :)
One of my old gaming groups, mostly girls, was known as House of Atlantides.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
If you ask me, Erin is Athena
& Hera, Piper is Artemis & Aphrodite, and Sephrena is Hestia & Serena. We mere mortals need to keep them and the site in our prayers as well as making offerings.
May Your Light Forever Shine
Bitcoin
It might be worth adding bitcoin as a payment option. There are companies that will do all the work for you and provide you with daily cash-outs for around 1 percent. bitpay.com and coinbase.com are the ones I know of.
Also, given that some people would want to keep their bigcloset viewing secret, it gives them an anonymous way to support you.
I know this is an old post but...
Is there a way to save money by going off grid? I mean like buying solar panels, making a biomass generator et others to make BigCloset self-sustainable, covering the power need for the server farm.