Ladies and Gents,

Over the last 48 hours, many of you would have noticed that STF was offline. This was due to WeBBspace causing too much load on the server. In order to be fair to other customers that shared the server, Pair decided to take WeBBspace offline. Unfortunately for us, there was no prior warning - just an email that was sent out when their system blocked access to WeBBspace.

Larry spoke to our host to find out exactly why we were tripping their system and, after a bit of digging around, we found out that it was primarily when search engines trawled the site. To prevent this from happening, we restricted the access search engines had on the site in an attempt to buy us time while we looked into alternative solutions. Unfortunately this was not enough, and the site once again tripped Pair's system, this time due to the size of our database.

Since then, Larry, Andy and I have been trying to work out the best way forward. The Internet Department had actually considered a server move back in Nov 08; whilst the discussion had narrowed down our choices, it was allowed to fall by the wayside. It was revived earlier this month, with a view to moving to a 'Virtual Private Server', a service that Pair just recently started offering and is offered by a few other hosts as well. From the recent situation, it was clear that, given the nature of the problem, a VPS would be the only way to move forward. Pair, possibly in recognition that they had not handled this matter in the best way and due to our long history with the company, offered us their Tier 2 VPS solution at a notable discount. Since it's an in-host move, they have also handled the server migration (which would likely have taken us multiple days to do ourselves). It was Larry's shrewd negotiating with Pair that got us the discount, so he deserves a fair bit of recognition for that.

Whilst this does not excuse the Internet Department for not dealing with a site move earlier in the year, this situation has shown to us that we cannot operate on a shared hosting plan without feeling the wrath of the host we are with (whether that had been Pair or not). Having the VPS does mean that we are in a far better situation to provide services both on WeBBspace and on the server in general. Pair have also agreed to install an opcode cache, which will reduce the amount of time it takes for pages to be loaded. The new server also includes substantially more resources (memory, disk space, etc.), and we are continuing to investigate ways to reduce the cost of the new server.

On a personal note, I would like to thank Larry for his extensive work whilst actually being away at a Drupal conference, and to Andy who signed off on decisions that needed to be made post haste. As Acting Internet Director, I apologise for this situation and the inaction of the Internet Department prior to it.

Many thanks,

Jack Dipper
Rear Admiral
Acting Internet Director