The Terulia Forum Service / Relay Chat server underwent a massive upgrade last night thanks to computer parts and electronics acquired at a recent university surplus auction. The old setup was more than capable, but given the circumstances, this seemed like the perfect time to upgrade the server.

Previously: TFS/TRC was running on a 1.8GHz Dell Optiplex GX240 w/ 1GB PC133 RAM. It and the FFO server (and also my modem and router) shared a single APC 750 backup battery.

Now: The TFS/TRC server was replaced with a hyper-threaded 2.8GHz Tri-C system with 2GB of 400MHz DDR RAM. The new server also includes a spare internal hard drive to support user file uploads to the revamped file server (the next iteration of files.terulia.com, whenever I get around to completing it).

The forum's database backup capacity has increased in size by 400%.

The TFS/TRC server is now supported by a dedicated APC 750. The old battery backup (also an APC 750) is now dedicated to the FFO server. The modem and router are on a separate, dedicated APC 350.

The total cost of these upgrades (including the new server as well as the 2 additional APCs) was approximately $60. (a high estimate since parts were assembled from multiple machines which are now without RAM; the real cost was probably closer to $40)