Let me just say that I am absolutely thrilled by the response. The support from the sea turtle community has been absolutely fantastic. As I am writing this we are not quite two weeks in and we have over 69% of the target of $6000.

If you are wondering about the details of the need and what the plans are here's some of it. SEATURTLE.ORG currently runs on a Dell 4200. Dell calls/called it a departmental server. It is a workhorse, but it is 6 going on 7 years old. In it's time it was a top of the line machine. Dual processors with 4x9GB hard drives with hardware raid. Unfortunately the processors are 333MHz, which is slow by todays standards. A comparable machine today would come with dual 1 to 2GHz processors. There haven't been any hardware problems yet, but at this point it is just a matter of time, and seaturtle.org is to the point where we can't afford for it to go down unexpectedly and for an indefinite period of time. So, time for a new server.

I was initially planning on getting the new server later in the year, but my hand was forced early. The server is parked at a facility in Seattle (that was the place with the cheapest colocation fees I could find at the time the server was bought). For those that don't know, colocation is a service offered by ISPs whereby you give them your server which they place in their facility for a fee. You get a broadband connection and pay them a lot of money every month, and they worry about keeping the internet connection and power up. The colocation fees are seaturtle.org's single largest expense. In any case, part of the problem with this scenario is that I live in Washington DC. I was able to park the server in Seattle because I have a friend that lives out there who could physically intervene if anything ever went wrong with the server. Most everything can be don't remotely, over the internet, but if something broke or we needed to upgrade the operating system then someone has to go in to physically work with the machine. For example we installed a new OS last fall when you may have noticed the server was down for a day or two. I do software updates pretty regularly, about every couple of weeks or so, heck I upgraded the kernel just last night which is a big deal that probably doesn't mean much to most of you, but some things you just have to sit in front of the machine for.

I digress. So my friend told me about three weeks ago that he was leaving Seattle in the next month or so. Suddenly we have an emergency. SEATURTLE.ORG didn't have the funds on hand to purchase a server yet. Not the end of the world because the server wasn't breaking yet, but if and when it did I wouldn't be in a position to do anything about it. I should mention that another part of "the plan" has been to move the server closer to me so that I could babysit it if needed. After early June it would become difficult to retrieve the server because I don't know anybody else in Seattle. I should also mention that the server is a behemoth, about the size of two desktop towers side by side and 60-70lbs (100lbs when it's all crated up). A an electronics shipping nightmare if it's not something you do all the time.

So, I go over the issues with the board and everyone on the board agrees that a fund drive is a good idea and that the sea turtle community will come through. AND THEY DO! We're not quite there yet, but I have faith. SEATURTLE.ORG will continue without a hitch, maybe a couple of days of downtime while all of the content is transferred from one machine to the other and everything is configured for a new ISP here in the DC area. Best of all we will be on a new machine, and as colocation fees have come down slightly over the years I might even be able to get a better deal. I am hoping for a new dual processor server, this time in the 1GHz+ range. This should really help speed up processor intensive tasks, Maptool operations in particular, and provide extra power for new tools that I would like to add. Also something like dual 60GB harddrives. That will almost double the amount of storage available and provide a redundant drive (using mirrored raid) in case one drive ever goes down. So a lot more space will be available and the data that is stored on seaturtle.org will be better protected. In theory the old server will be shipped to me after the new one is set up and I can set it up somewhere else as a backup in case there is some kind of catastrophic failure.

Hopefully that will never happen though. Keep your fingers crossed.