blogs

Well it was bound to happen eventually!

My wife has been dreaming of the day she would own a MINI (old or new) and having driven her Mitsubishi Eclipse for the past 8 years it was definitely time to make a change. The Eclipse has served her well during this time covering around 125K but these past few weekends I've had to perform maintenance that proves the car is getting old.

What's with the title of the post you may ask? It's actually quite simple really, a few years back Lea was Minnie Mouse at Disneyworld, a character she played along with others for about 5-years and now she is driving one, hence the Minnie to MINI reference in the title!

[Click Image To Enlarge]

The new MINI Cooper is actually a great little car with plenty of power for its size and good economy too. I'll be interested to see what MPG Lea can get out of this on her many trips back and forth to Orlando. An interesting note that I can't believe I didn't already know is that the MINI Cooper and Cooper S both use 91-octane Premium Gasoline! While this is going to have an impact at the pump I'm optimistic that the MPG will tell the real story.

The Original Mini and it's somewhat successor in the United Kingdom being the Mini-Metro have a soft place with me as while growing up my Mum had 2 of the original Minis. I learned to drive in the Mini-Metro and it was also my first car. To top it all off I used to race both at the amateur level at our local racing circuit, Brands Hatch near Swanley in Kent.

Seeing this 'mini-marvel' makes me nostalgic; thinking of all the adrenaline pumping moments while trying to out-brake or out-maneuver the person next to, behind or in front of you on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.

Sadly, the pursuit of high-octane weekend-fun came to an end when a friend, who was on the same team (low-budget, so we took turns), rolled our only car and everybody agreed it was fun while it lasted but too costly to start over again with a new car. Needless to say, he was fine and walked away with barely a scratch which is more than could be said of the car! Believe me when I say roll cages work!

Browsing around the last couple of evenings I have realized just how much of a following the new MINI has and it really excites me to think I could relive my youth with a 'modded-MINI'.

While Lea has said she would be happy to let me 'mod' or to use the more Stateside term 'pimp' (what the hell is that all about!) her ride; I feel it may prove a little inconvenient if she needed to go somewhere just as I am half-way through an impulsive Stage 2 modification of the engine.

So who knows maybe I'll go grab myself one of these modern beauties and relive the days of my youth, covered in grease and oil and grinning from ear to ear with joy. We'll see, but for now I can delight myself with the occasional drive of the wifes car! :)

Over the past several weeks/months I have been collecting together the components necessary to update and enhance the hardware supporting this and several other websites that I maintain from my home.

The original configuration in a self-hosted model was that of a single PC. This thankfully was replaced by better hardware a couple of years ago that could be best described as powerful desktops or low-grade, non-redundant, server equipment.

Well today I am pleased to announce that through a little begging, a little borrowing and a little scavenging I have established not only a redundant configuration in terms of multiple web servers but also a load-balanced and highly available configuration.

Here's a quick overview of the setup as it stands now.

[Click Image To Enlarge] Home Network Diagram

As you can see there are now two web servers and two database servers. A little overkill for the current setup maybe; but enough room to grow for the foreseeable future too. Like I said earlier this is not the only website that I am hosting on this system but it is the one that currently draws the most attention and the most traffic.

Here are few pictures of the equipment in operation. Some of it is not the newest server technology but the systems run strong, offer RAID capability and in the case of the two newer servers redundant power also.

[Click Image To Enlarge] The used rack is a little more aesthetically pleasing than the previous open wire rack	[Click Image To Enlarge] Wiring mostly in place, just a little tidy up to do.
[Click Image To Enlarge] Intake fan at bottom aids cooling as does spacing somewhat	[Click Image To Enlarge] Separate switches for separate internet connections
[Click Image To Enlarge] Extractor fan to remove excess heat. First fan had worn bearing hence the clipped wires	[Click Image To Enlarge] Foam aids sound suppression but also heat build up

My next step will be to establish some kind of round-robin DNS setup that permits fail over, albeit slightly delayed between the two types of internet connectivity that I have.

Over the next week or so I hope to provide examples of how I have established the load-balancing and replication using the Microsoft Windows Operating System.

Yes, that's right I am using Windoze!

Why not Linux I hear you cry? It's the perfect LAMP configuration! This is true, but I wanted to try something a little, well unconventional by todays standards.

That said, in all likelihood upgrades or additional equipment will involve Linux, although I'm hearing good things about Windows 2008, so I'm gonna have to try it somewhere, maybe here!

Over the past few evenings I have successfully upgraded the site to the latest release of Drupal, now at 6.2!

Having hit a few speed bumps with incompatible modules it's taken a little while to get back to the level of functionality there before the upgrade. That said, it was a necessary upgrade for many reasons most obviously to me being that of the hundreds of fake user accounts that have been springing up on a daily basis. At points during any given day there were tens of new users accounts being registered every hour. To combat this problem I have introduced the reCaptcha module that makes use of the reCaptcha web service for 'human' recognition versus the annoying scripts that have been invading the site. At the same time, and I apologize to all this affects but I have removed all user accounts that weren't personally known to me or accessed within the last 12-months. Please re-join whenever you get the chance and again sorry for the inconvenience.

As part of this upgrade you will also notice that I have included a rating system to allow visitors to rate the posts and comments that they read. This will hopefully add to the user experience and encourage participation. Along those same lines I have decided to open up the comments to allow 'anonymous' input while utilizing the reCaptcha service to 'fingers-crossed' dispel any and all scripted abuse that has been witnessed in the past. I'll let this ride for a time and if I see any abuse occurring regroup and decided on what to do then. All comments, just like posts will continue to be moderated by myself and require approval prior to public display.

Well that's it for now! It's been a while and a lot has happened but without trying to dissect my life, my work and everything in the middle I am going to push forward with a new revitalized blogging schedule. On the list of topics that I have running around in my head at the moment are hardware upgrades to the site infrastructure (remember this - Old Hardware Post) and the reconfiguration and introduction of load-balancing and replication. These and more will be coming very soon.

Dave