I talked Dad into getting two nice Dell PowerEdge servers to be the new DNS/web/mail servers for Peel, Inc. They’ll also power some of the kence.org infrastructure as well. They’re pretty sweet boxes (1×3.6GHz dual-core Intel, 2GB RAM, RAID5 disks, 2×10/100/1000 network cards). They will both be configured almost identical with the usual Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL, BIND, SquirrelMail, Postfix, Dovecot, etc. One will go at the new sales office in Pflugerville and the other will be at the shop there in Littlefield. We have a business ADSL account in Pflugerville and are getting one in Littlefield (to replace the wireless connection they currently have). Both connections are 1.5/384 which is faster than my 144/144 IDSL connection at the house. The Pflugerville box will be the primary box (Master DNS, final SMTP destination, IMAP/POP server, etc) with the box in Littlefield being the backup (Slave DNS, SMTP backup, MySQL replica, etc). I’m in the process of setting the boxes up now and hope to move them in a couple of weeks after I get them finalized and tested.
I’m going to be phasing things onto the new boxes after I get them installed. The first thing to go will be the DNS and web. Followed by mail a few weeks later (the trickier of the two). I’m moving to virtual mail hosting with a MySQL database backend for both Postfix and Dovecot to make administration easier. A big plus will be the ability for users to change their passwords which has plagued me for years now.
After the migration I’ll still have daneel.kence.org set up as a relay for a while although he will eventually be phased out. After consolidating some hardware I’ll be creating a new non-peelinc-web server box to host at the Pflugerville office to replace mcguvnor.kence.org although that’s a couple of months away at the earliest. I’m looking forward to getting the old space heaters out of my office at the house – sure to lower my electric bills in the summer!
Digital Ramblings 