2-Speed in Transit

This blog was moved to a new, external server at 1&1 last night.  While I’ve tried to think through and take care of all the scenarios of broken links, screwed up widgets, bad sitemaps, non-functioning plugins and so forth, I’m sure that I’ve screwed something up.  If you notice anything strange, I’d appreciate your pointing it out – probably best as a comment so that others can learn too.

I have had a Windows 2003 server running in my home for years with almost no downtime.  It hosts several web sites, runs an IMAP/POP/SMTP server (Merak), serves files, streams audio/video and uses dynamic DNS to keep the rest of the world aware of its IP address.  It’s worked like a champ.  I’ve shied away from going with a hosting provider in the past because of lack of flexibility.  They’re fine if you want to run a few web sites, but offer little to someone like me who wants to hack around with server settings and install other non-supported applications, like the mail server I use.  Of course, dedicated external servers are available, but for my limited needs, they were too expensive.

Along came virtualization and products are showing up that work for someone with needs in the middle like me.  I can now get a virtual server (in this case, 1&1 calls it a VPS or, Virtual Private Server) with a reasonable amount of disk space, a 1Gb network connection (with dedicated IP address) and a prebuilt, but open server appliance running Windows 2003 or Fedora Core 4.  I’m not selling or promoting this solution or 1&1 in any way just yet.  I have to see if this thing works in the real world.

So, have at it.  I hope I got most of it right because there an awful lot of moving pieces.

Related posts:

1. Speed Racer’s Back!