I wanted to let everyone know that earlier today I shipped the new server off to its new home, and it is tentatively scheduled to arrive there on Wednesday. So sometime Wednesday (or later in the week), expect some down time as the server is swapped out and I do the final steps to migrate to the new server. I've done the initial setup, but will need to copy over the most recent version of the database and things like that before it can go live, and it's going to be an in-place exchange of the temporary server for the new one, so there will be down time while the database is restored onto the new server. But once RabbitEars is moved to it, we should be set for a very long time.

Next, I previously promised that I would provide more details on the RabbitEars hosting situation, and I think now is as good a time as any. Our generous host is the founder of Silica Broadband in Prospect, KY. He's a long-time member of Satellite Guys who started Silica Broadband several years ago. It is a fiber ISP in the area, but also provides web hosting out of its Kentucky facility, and he wanted to help out by providing RabbitEars with a new home. I am extremely grateful for his help, and I am especially pleased to be working with someone who understands what RabbitEars does and appreciates its value to the OTA community.

Finally, I thought everyone would like to know more about the server that RabbitEars will be using. I've built it myself from new parts, and it has an AMD Ryzen 3700X processor, 32GB ECC RAM, 2x2TB WD Red M.2 SSDs in RAID-1, and runs Ubuntu Server 20.04. To say this is an improvement over the old server would be a vast understatement. The old server had a 2009-era Xeon in it, 16GB RAM, 2x2TB hard drives in RAID-1, and ran Ubuntu 16.04. The benchmarks I found indicate the new CPU performs about 10 times better than the old one, and RAM has never been a limiting factor for RabbitEars.

Exciting times await. I'm looking forward to a faster and more reliable RabbitEars!