There are obviously more knowledgeable around here to provide an explanation here, but I will try.
First; I fully understand the frustration, because we all have to deal with it. When you carefully read the message at our homepage in which the donation drive of this was announced by Dangerousdave26 you will be able to find most answers.
The amount of money we tried to generate during the last donation drive is exactly the same as it has been for the last 10 years.
As Dave explains there are several options, but our current two servers are over 10 years old, so we really need to do something. As we also want to try to reduce costs we want to put both simhouse.net as simhouse.com at one single server. Although this will save costs, the lack of redundancy is of course one of the disadvantages.
Our current .com server is a 32bit server, with 3GB ram, Quadcore CPU and 1TB drive. When you look at the specification of your current computer, you will realise this is not exactly current state of the art. Like your own computer a server needs to do its own maintenance, files which are incorrectly stored need to be moved, files need to be shift in an optimal order, etc. compare it with defrag on your own computer. The maintenance requires processor power, due to which less power becomes available for the external users (we). As the increased processor activity requires more power and will generate more heat, you often get a time window in which you are allowed to have you server do its internal maintenance. I assume you will understand that the number of actions on a server with 400-500 multiple users is a bit more complex than on a desktop with one single user.
As we are a global wide wide forum it is not possible to schedule this internal maintenance at the moment nobody is using the server.
To solve most performance related problems we want to move to a 64bit platform, 8 core CPU, 64GB of ram and 2TB of drive space in a RAID 6 environment. Which is a decent server with a good pice-value balance. (Still not the absolute best, but when you want to donate a better machine, please do).
During the donation drive, most of us (if not all) were suddenly confronted with the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic. For the SOH one of the immediate consequences was that the donation drive lasted much longer than expected. Many of us lost there jobs or were confronted in a different way with the economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
The target of this years donation drive was only reached on the 12th of April. Which provided a green light for the planned modernisation of our servers. But as you can understand the replacement of the servers currently isn't automatically the highest priority, as many of us have severe and urgent issues in real life which currently need their attention.
We also have to find out whether our plans are still executable under the current circumstances. Are the required technicians available? Can they travel? Is the planned hard-ware still available, etc. So the execution of plans might need more time than we originally anticipated.
Priller is correct that our servers were moved in the past. When my memory is still correct, this was because our previous data-centre merged with our current data-centre after which they abandoned the data-centre which housed our servers.
Last year Dave provided an overview with all the annual costs and the way our money was spend. I expect he will do the same this year once he know how he will and can spend it. Please have some patience as Dave is one of the people who is hit quite hard by this crisis.
As said I understand everybodies frustration, but we are doing our utmost best to keep this outhouse running. And I ask for your understanding that people currently have other important things on their agenda.
We don't have any influence on people who think its fun to overload data-traffic or who invest in bots which "harvest the complete internet several times per week.
Kind regards,
Huub
