Category: hosting

hosting

Moved to WordPress and new domain!

I gave up!

This blog was hacked again and the database taken down. As this is no longer my primary blog (and I post here infrequently now) I decided the best course of action would be to simply take it off my server and give it to WordPress.com to host (the chances of it being hacked there are remote!).

I have wanted to change the domain of the blog for quite some time as well so I decided to combine the two jobs into one.

I already owned TomRaftery.com and it was doing nothing so I decided to use this as it is a more appropriate url for the site.

To upload the site to WordPress.com I first created a blank WordPress.com blog (simply by signing up and verifying email – a 2 second job).

WordPress 15mb Import limit
WordPress 15mb Import limit

Then I went to my old site and created an export file (Tools -> Export) – this downloaded a 24mb xml file to my computer. When I went to the WordPress.com to do the import I spotted that the Import message read “Choose a file from your computer: (Maximum size: 15mb)”. Oops! – this was going to be an issue.

I thought about going into the xml file and manually editing it but when I opened it I saw it was over 400,000 lines long and I really didn’t want to mess it up so I thought again.

I checked the spam list on the site and I saw there were thousands of spam comments in there. What if I deleted them and tried again? I did and sure enough this knocked the xml file size down to 17mb – an improvement but still too large to import. What to do?

WordPress Blog Export options
WordPress Blog Export options

Then I had a brainwave (should have been obvious really) – what if I split the export into two files? So I tried it, I first exported all blog posts up until December 2006 and then I did another export of all the blog posts from January 2007 until the most recent post (November 2010).

This created two files of less than 15mb each which could now be imported. Would WordPress.com allow me to import two files totaling more than 15mb? I didn’t know but figured it couldn’t hurt to try, so try I did and it worked a treat!

Now that all my blog posts (and their associated comments, categories, tags, etc) were imported the next step was to associate it with the TomRaftery.com domain. This required me to update the nameservers for the domain to point to WordPress nameservers (after paying for the domain pointing service from WordPress). Then I had to set it as the primary domain for the site (see below).

WordPress domain management
WordPress domain management

The last step was to go back to the old TomRafteryit.net domain and set a permanent (301) re-direct on it so that people (and search engines) would be re-directed over here to the new TomRaftery.com domain – now safely hosted on WordPress.com servers.

So here we are. If you are reading this – welcome to the old blog on this new site. Thanks for taking the time and hopefully I won’t leave it so long to the next post!

cix, data centre, energy, hosting, IT@Cork

CIX on Intruders.tv

We held our Open Day in CIX a couple of weeks back. We invited local businesses to come in and have a look at the data centre infrastructure before we closed up all the ducts and hazardous areas.

We also invited Intruders.tv to come along and film the event. They did and they published the interview they did with Adam and I the other day.

http://new.intruders.tv/swf/flvplayer.swf

The Open day was the day after the it@cork conference so I was quite tired. Watching the video now I realise I messed up on some of the figures! Typical data centres operate at 30% energy efficiency (not 70% like I said in the video) and CIX is rated to operate at 80% energy efficiency due to the innovative technologies we outlined in this interview.

hosting

Hosting365 back up again?

Irish hosting company Hosting365 went dark this morning at around 10:30am according to reports I am receiving. The last time this occurred was last July when there was a fire in a nearby ESB substation if memory serves.

I contacted Hosting365’s Marketing Director, Ed Byrne, about this incident and Ed informed me that:

We are back now. I need to get a full report but we did have a serious issue while electrical engineers we working on the UPS. Human error, incredibly annoying. Will tell all openly when I know.

As I write this, Hosting365’s main site is still offline and not answering pings.

UPDATE – Ed contacted me again to say that he is updating the blog on hosting365status.com with info as he gets it.

[Disclosure – I am a director of CIX – a company building a data centre in Cork]

cix, data centre, hosting

Views from the CIX mast

We are erecting a 24 metre mast outside our CIX data centre in Cork.

I was curious to know what the visibility would be like for our mast’s customers (we will be renting out space on the mast) so yesterday when we had a cherry picker onsite I had the driver lift me 10 metres and I took some photos.

I posted the photos on the mast’s page but, for example, looking East-South-East from 10m above the mast’s site you can see the former IFI plant on Great Island (8 miles as the crow flies)!:
View from CIX Mast

Remember these photos were taken from a height of 10m and the mast, when erected later this month, will be a full 24m!

[Disclosure] – I am a director of CIX

barcamp, cix, Climate Change, hosting

BarCamp Dublin on Saturday

BarCamp Dublin is on this Saturday (21st April 2007) in the Digital Hub.

Registration starts at 09:15 with the talks kicking off at 10:00.

There are lots of great speakers lined up to talk on topics as diverse as “Web Usability 101” right through to “Law of Blogs; Blogs of Law”.

I’ll be giving a talk on CIX’s data centre and how we hope to be carbon neutral.

I’m really looking forward to the day. It will be a fantastic opportunity to catch up with lots of old friends, make lots of new ones and hear fantastic talks into the bargain.

Oh, did I mention that entry is free?

See you there.

cix, hosting

CIX project

The CIX project is hurtling along (CIX is a project to build Cork’s first professional data centre).

I have posted photos over on the CIX blog of the mast foundation (160 tonnes of concrete and 5km of rebar steel!), the burying of our data cable ducts and of the installation of our suspended ceiling.

If you are interested in hearing more, I’m giving a talk at BarCamp Dublin about the CIX data centre and our plans around extreme energy efficiency on this coming Saturday.

[Disclosure – I am a director of CIX]

cix, Climate Change, hosting

A carbon neutral data centre?

I honestly don’t know if this is possible or if it has been done anywhere but our aim in CIX is to try to build a carbon neutral data centre.

Carbon neutral means that the data centre doesn’t create greenhouse gases and add to the climate change problems the planet is experiencing.

Data centres are notorious for requiring vast amounts of electricity and as we are based in a nuclear-free country, it is difficult to use lots of electricity without producing significant quantities of CO2.

We have a strategy document on how we can achieve this but to get there we need other partners to buy into the idea.

How revolutionary do you think this idea is? Would you put your racks/servers into a carbon neutral data centre over and above a carbon producing one?

cix, hosting

Site moved to new server

I moved this site onto a new server last night (since my former hosting company told me they no longer wanted my business).

I have to say, it seems to be far faster as a result (not really surprising – there are far fewer sites on this server). Let me know if you come across any problems.

The server is in the new CIX data centre in Cork. CIX is not finished yet but when it is, it will be Ireland’s first fully redundant data centre outside of Dublin

[Disclosure – I am a director or CIX Ltd.]

blacknight, cix, hosting

Just to clarify

I have heard it back that the reason for my recent posts about Blacknight is nothing to do with my poor customer service experience but rather because I am trying to bully Blacknight into becoming a customer of CIX!!!

In case anyone else has heard this ridiculous rumour and has put any stock in it let me address it quickly.

First off, anyone who knows Michele (MD of Blacknight), knows that any attempt to bully him into doing anything is definitely not going to work!

Secondly, how does this work anyway? Bully someone into buying something? Surely if I was chasing Michele as a customer for CIX, I would have been singing Blacknight and Michele’s praises on the blog. Not picking up on the failings of Blacknight’s customer service.

Finally, as far as I recall, I only spoke to Michele once about hosting in CIX. This was when I called him to inform him of our intention to build an N+1 data centre in Cork way back in July or August of last year. At the time Michele didn’t express much interest and said he wouldn’t commit to anything but that he may take a rack in the data centre when it had been in operation a year or so and had proven itself. I asked him to forward on any requirements he’d have from a data centre. He never did.

Not exactly a hot prospect so I didn’t think about him much more in relation to CIX as we had far larger prospects to chase.