ibiblio.org on the move

angled view of several identical servers as seen from the frontPardon our dust is the usual phrase to explain the disorder that comes with construction or renovations.  However, the only dust around here is what we’re wiping off old servers as we decommission them.  ibiblio.org is migrating from its current hosting provider to a data center on the UNC Chapel Hill campus.

We’re about 30% complete but have transitioned more than half of our outbound data transfer.  The hosts for Linux distributions and software mirrors, as well as the live audio streams for WCPE, WDAV, WNCW, WXYC, and WCOM, are in shiny new virtual homes.  Outbound traffic from the new infrastructure topped 300 Mbps today.

Giving a nod to the virtualization advocates, ibiblio will leave behind four racks of server equipment and occupy about half a rack.  Everything except networking and storage will move to virtual machines.  Even the LVS (Linux Virtual Server) load balancers are happily running on VM guests.

There will certainly be a few web site interruptions as we make the transition, but we’ll keep the disorder to a minimum.  The result will be better performance and room to grow in the future.

photo by Craig A. Rodway