Bob, currently the Web site resides on servers that are offsite. We don't own them.
 
Here is an explanation of the current situation and our plan to improve it, taken from the capital budget proposal containd in the 2011-2012 plan that was sent to the A&F Committee a few days ago. The committee will be considering it next week.
 
The project is not over budget although it has taken more staff time than had been anticipated.
 
Dave
 

C. Servers of ARRL Web Site

The ARRL website is presently hosted in the Rackspace cloud, sharing server resources with other Rackspace customers. This was done when we discovered late in the process of deploying the new site that the system requires many more processors than anticipated -- more than can be provided in a single server. However, in the cloud we are sharing resources with other cloud users, and the site's performance suffers because of this. We considered getting additional leased servers at Rackspace or another provider but concluded it would be more cost-effective and more manageable to move the site back to HQ. (HQ Internet connectivity was upgraded substantially this year, making this move feasible.)

We are requesting the addition of four small server-grade machines. The requested machines, which have multi-core processors but not much in the way of disk storage or memory, are to be used to service Web-page requests under the guidance of a master server. This is the same configuration as the present cloud-based system, but the hardware will be fully dedicated to the Web site, providing higher performance, and the backing database will be run on optimized SAN storage, substantially ameliorating one of the main bottlenecks of the present site.

Each of the servers costs $1,500, amounting to a total of $6,000.


From: Bob Vallio [mailto:rbvallio@gmail.com]
Sent: Sun 11/14/2010 5:02 AM
To: arrl-odv
Subject: arrl.org

Recently, I encountered several consecutive proxy errors when attempting to log on to arrl.org.  That is an indication that the system was overloaded.  One of the "features" of the new site is that it is very demanding of server resources, and the server system we are using is sometimes unable to keep up with that demand.  The way to fix that is to buy more servers.  How much more money must we spend on the new system, beyond the amount which is already over budget?

Bob Vallio -- W6RGG