We're Moving

Yes, the pictures do not lie: we’re leaving our current provider and moving all of TextDrive to a new and vastly better situation, with our own hardware, in one of the best colocation facilities in the world, where we’ll be rubbing shoulders with such lightweights as Akamai and Yahoo.

Why the move?
Recent outages have shed bright light on an intolerable situation. We simply have not had the level of control and access we need to serve our shared hosting customers properly. Up until now, every time there’s been a major problem with a server, we’ve had to rely on people we don’t know (who work in a data centre far away from any of us) to do what it takes to get the problem solved. Often, to our immense frustration, we’re the ones delivering very specific instructions on the best way to proceed, and just as often these must be told to someone who then hangs up, wanders out to the server, rolls over a ‘crash cart’, attempts to execute the instructions, and wanders back, whereupon phone communications resume. It’s like trying to run a webhosting company in the age of the stagecoach and telegram. It can’t continue.

How will you fix it?
We’ve made a massive capital investment in a fleet of the very best Dell servers, which we’ll now be able to access in two rather expedient ways:

  • Via console server (which means that, say, Jan in Atlanta or Ryan in Madison can access and control every server as though it’s sitting on his own desk)
  • In person (the machines are 8 minutes away from Jason’s house)

Sounds … good?
Yes. Not only will this move improve our level of control immeasurably, it’ll bring a huge upgrade in power and capacity, and allow us the flexibility to meet fast growth head-on. And fast growth and TextDrive appear to be synonymous these days. We’ll be ready.

Okay. What do I have to do?
For the vast majority, who are using our DNS servers and have no custom IP setup, we’ll take care of everything for you. Your passwords, logins, web & email addresses will all stay the same, and you shouldn’t notice any interruptions. For those with special setups, you can expect simple instructions on managing the move here on the forum, on the weblog, and by email.

When will this happen?
We’ll be snug and humming in San Diego by the end of August.

What about my damn European datacentre?
Our new colocation provider has centres all over Europe, and is eager to place us wherever we’d like. Expect more news after the big move.

Anything else?
Seriously: heartfelt thanks from us to all of you for being with us, for your patience and impatience as we find our stride, for having faith in our future, and for just totally getting it.

·:· Posted 20 August 2005, 14:29 by Dean Allen to About TextDrive  |  

  1. When are you going to start accepting new accounts again?

    — Dylan Moreland    21 August 2005, 02:33    #
  2. Next week.

    — jason Hoffman    21 August 2005, 04:08    #