Long time no post.

qm2 is safe for now, I have bigger fish to fry.

Been working a lot with external cheap VPSes, results are mixed but not awful.

Also running a trial of Directadmin on what is currently called web4 but should probably get a dwarf name because I don't anticipate making it a H-Sphere box. Reason: I'm getting sick of Ensim on grumpy, the last upgrade to PHP using ART repository was really a disaster. So I was thinking (with Vam's help) of doing a two step migration from grumpy to a cpanel box, then to directadmin.

Directadmin's pros include

• Vam likes it (which is big, because he's being very helpful in sysadmin support),
• it has a lifetime license (plusses and minuses there)
• is cheaper than cPanel monthly/yearly even w/o lifetime license

Of course, I already have the Ensim license, but the installation is so hosed on grumpy at this point that I don't think I can keep using it much longer, and unless they suddenly start supporting it, keeping sites there will eventually cause a big fail, which no one wants.

I have replaced the 256 GB drives on the "web4" box with two 1 TB drives, and even though I cannot add to the RAM short of replacing the MB, it should be okay. I had Vam install DA there. We did a couple of test migrations, and they worked, but there are some missing features, especially the inability to add jailed FTP subaccounts automatically via the control panel.

Also, reading the DA forums leads me to believe the DA team has less depth than the cPanel team. While I like to hack around as much as the next guy, I just don't have the time, and I (perhaps naively) believe I'll have less to do if I choose cPanel. My current thinking is to install Xen on the box, and then make one honking big VPS inside running cPanel. This is because Xen itself doesn't have a huge footprint, and cPanel for VPS has a lower footprint and license fee, so the tradeoff probably works. Big question is, can the box support all the sites on grumpy? Rambling: it's probably about time I learned cPanel, no?

whew

The "bashful" server isn't on next month's invoice! YAY! Still have qm2/3, working on a plan for that. So far have moved DNS off. Or did I say that already?

and more stuff

• Some PCI issues
• win2008 on aboud
• upgrade h-sphere (again, yay, they're maintaining it)
• free up hardware "just in case" (yeah, right)

bashful bites the dust this month

No, really.

It was up until yesterday ns.alsonetworks.net and ns3.alsonetworks.net and it had some other random info on it. I ended up getting three geographically disperse cheap-o VPSes, total cost around $15 and used webmin to clone the DNS stuff on bashful to the new "ns" VPS, and slaved the new "ns2" and "ns3" VPSes. Then I changed DNS A records and re-registered the name servers. After a 24 hour wait, I took down named on bashful, and checked. All is well. Then I converted "ns" to master, and violin's your uncle.

So I sent to softlayer and canceled bashful. It goes down on the 18th.

Next project: drop qm2 / qm3 on softlayer. If the VPSes on burst work out, there's no real reason to keep even a cheap dedicated on softlayer. The qm2 / qm3 server functions as DNS, nagios and pbcs backups. As mentioned above, DNS is now off that box (I did it at the same time as I did bashful). Creating a new Nagios installation will be a bit tedious but will give me an excuse to investigate cool front ends (opsview?) for the tool. Once that's done I'll probably have to upgrade the disk on one of the other VPSes (no reason to keep Nagios and backups on the same box) to accommodate the pbcs backup stuff.

The VPSes: two in USA (Scranton, LA) and one in EU (Manchester). Nicely disperse geographically for DNS. 512MB, 20 GB HDD. Took a bit of tweaking, especially Manchester, but they seem okay.

Can easily put Nagios on one. EU or USA? Don't know, hafta think.

Backups won't fit in 20 GB, choose either to expand or just get a different VPS. Also hafta think.

Anyway next project is Nagios on somewhere outside of qm2 / qm3.

sheesh

Boy, have I let this drop.

At least I now have a "direction" for moving the DNS. The question is, where? I also have to archive a few things, and grab Squirrelmail address book and aliases. That's about it.

no more sites on bashful

...but DNS is proving to be a pain in the neck. Over 100 domains to adjust. I've set up the cluster to receive the DNS but I seriously doubt (with the way things are going) that I'll get it cleared before the billing deadline.

long time no update - 6 left on bashful

At least 6 show up in the control panel. One site canceled, or it would have been 7. And I actually moved support.alsonetworks.com yesterday, or it would have been one more.

Still have to move the main website, alsonetworks.com, to the VPS. As of this writing the goal is to have the VPS host all the alsonetworks.com related sites, including but not limited to the domains, forum, main site, and support site. May move mail and MySQL there too. Originally intended to use CP for that, but there were PCI issues.

Of the remaining sites (not listing full names to protect privacy):

1. oc has been notified of the impending move, site contents have been copied, waiting for answer from their tech people
2. gs is going to be complicated, some funky FTP permissions to deal with
3. cj should be simple
4. jb is an oscommerce site, have to fix that old version with mysql 5 fixes
5. yr should be easy, but I don't know who to contact
6. and of course, good ol' alsonetworks.com