A quick update for everyone... I got in touch with the sales department at the datacenter, asking about putting the new server in place and my "overcharge." They've raised rates on all customers/plans by $20, and they claim to have upgraded their backbone capacity significantly to justify this. There was an announcement on their forums about the price increase, but it was labeled (and email notice sent) as "Capacity upgrade!" and you had to read the full article to see the bit about the fees going up. Not the best business practice, but I can't fault them too much for it. As such, the minimum I'm gonna be paying is now $129/month. They say I'm on a bandwidth plan for a 5mbps connection currently. The new plan they have for 5mbit is $119, but it limits to a 2U server. I talked with sales and they said they'd let me keep the current plan even with the new 3U server. The other option is moving up to the $169/month plan, which is a full 100mbps port. That's technically 20x faster, but as it's shared bandwidth, it probably averages only 6x faster, but the burst speeds should be closer to 20x.
They've also given me the okay for having a week of overlap, letting me do the nearly-live migration (probably only a few hours of downtime) that I wanted... though they are a bit backed up, so if I want to do that (and I do) it can't be this next week. Unfortunately, I'm headed to India Oct. 2nd for about two weeks. I don't want to put a new server online, then leave the country just a few days later. I really think I need to be around/available in case any unexpected problems crop up. I know a lot of people are waiting to file new applications, and I apologize, but you're gonna have to wait a bit longer. I get back from India Oct. 15th. I should be able to ship the server on the 16th or 17th, bringing it online as soon as it gets to the datacenter, probably the week of the 21st. There is a _small_ chance I can get some free time this weekend, and manage to finish prepping the server. If so, I may send it off monday, leaving it with about a week online to flush out any bugs. I'm also going to see if I can find someone to hand root too while I'm gone. If I can pull off those two, it could be online before the end of the month. Keep in mind, that's a _small_ chance, but I'd prefer it to happen that way.
On the first issue, of bandwidth/pricing... I'm really tempted to go for the full 100mbps plan. Right now, the webserver is averaging 2-3mbps, with another 0.5 for email/misc. That's an average though, not a peak, and I think the peaks could be significantly higher (aka, faster) if the capacity was there. Also, with the new server, I'm hoping will go through another growth period, and the extra capacity might be a good idea. I just need to see if I can budget another $40/month (or $60, considering it just went up $20 anyway.) I was REALLY supposed to be "rolling in it" (money) by this point, and not having to worry about things like "budgets." Ah, but such is life. :-)
