With the problems we have been having for the last year with the old CPAN Testers server, we started planning to upgrade to a new server some time ago. With the events at the end of August, our timeline was brought forward several weeks. Having already made some preliminary enquiries, with the possibility of another sponsorship deal, we applied for a new server with Bytemark. Birmingham Perl Mongers have previously had dealings with Bytemark, and their support staff have always provided an excellent service. With our Open Source status the guys at Bytemark not only provided us with a server, but also offered us very welcome discount.

Having started to build the server from scratch, rebuilding all the databases and files, it became evident that we had some problems. As mentioned in the last update, the guys at Bytemark stepped up and helped us to identify the problem and fix it very quickly. This is nothing like the help and support we have previously received, and I am rather glad we have made this particular move. Hopefully we won't have to upgrade again for quite some time.

For those that might be interested the current spec is as follows:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (2.8GHz)
RAM: 16GB
DSK: 2 × 500GB (RAID1)

This is a 6 core machine, and the performance improvement is already noticable. I was recently asked whether our code was written to cope with parallel processing, but with so many processes all running at once, we wouldn't see the benefit. The extra capacity does mean that database lookups and statistical analysis now perform much better, and even bzip isn't causing us too many problems now. However, to avoid the slashdot effect, all bots, spiders and crawlers will be blocked from accessing the main dynamic Reports site. This may be lifted at some point in the future, but the benefit both to help building pages, and to promote Perl via dubious lists, hasn't materialised. They will be able to access the static site, so they won't be blocked entirely.

If you or your company would be interested in sponsoring CPAN Testers, please get in touch. We have already been offered some private donations and backup services, and thanks to the support of Birmingham Perl Mongers we are able to fund the new server for another year, but we are always happy to talk to anyone who can help continue CPAN Testers for many years to come.