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Server Status Update


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As we all know, the traffic increase over the past 2 weeks has been a shock to the geocaching.com web site, and we've been tackling ways to increase our infrastructure to react to the current load - and allow us to anticipate increasing traffic this summer. We continually surprised at the traffic growth; We've been doubling logs/accounts/caches each summer since the creation of the web site in 2000.

 

We have ordered machines and installed several already, but they are currently just running in the server closet at Internap in anticipation of the server changes. So you won't see any noticeable improvement yet.

 

However, last night we upgraded our current web server with more processors which should alleviate some of the current issues. We also hope to add an additional database server shortly, so less time sensitive data can be replicated to this machine for faster queries. Don't worry - the data will only be seconds to minutes old.

 

The final change will happen towards the end of the month. Behind the scenes we have been modifying the web site code so we can create a web server farm.

 

For the uninitiated, a server farm is a bunch of web servers that have the same geocaching.com web site. A machine sits between your web browser and the farm, routing you to the fastest server. Most large web sites have this setup, but until now we did not have the resources (read: cold hard cash) to afford such a setup. Necessity and supporting members have allowed this to happen.

 

*grovel*

 

There will be the occasional hiccup, such as the power strip frying on us when we were installing hardware. So please be patient if the site occasionally goes down while we make this difficult transition. We are monitoring the site closely.

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