Our web server crashed… HARD.

Perhaps you have noticed that this blog, along with my main web site, SophSoft.com, has been down and non-functional for a couple of days. The web server hardware that was running these sites (and several others) got completely fried on Sunday.

When I say “fried”, I mean truly fried. The AMD processor in the box overheated and filled the area with a nauseating burning electronics smell. If anybody asks, the amount of time it takes for an improperly cooled CPU to self-destruct is about 5 seconds, and when that happens, it stinks (in more ways than one).

We were already contemplating a system upgrade anyway, and since finding a replacement for this aged processor would be considerably more hassle and cost than replacing the entire box (with one three times the speed), we acted upon the latter option. This also gave us the opportunity to dump Windows 2000 Server in favor of Ubuntu Server (Linux).

So, after building a new server box and installing a new (to me) operating system, the hardware and software now seem to be working properly. Note that “properly” is not quite “as desired“, and there is still much configuration to do in the coming days (including recovery of our secondary sites), but at least our two main sites are back together.

[Insert image of Phoenix rising from the ashes.]