Hosted!

datacenter

At long last, my websites are now hosted somewhere that isn’t subject to the ineptitude of NIPSCO or Comcast!

I’ve moved all my websites to a GoDaddy web hosting account. It’s only costing me about $80 a year, so it’s relatively inexpensive. It’s an experiment in downsizing my energy consumption at home. Shutting down my storage server was a big step in the right direction. It consisted of a giant 3U rackmount server with 16x 2TB hard drives, 3x power supplies, and a roar that rivals that of a Pratt and Whitney jet engine. It generated nearly enough heat to keep the house heated during the winter months all by itself. Shutting down that server probably lowered my electric bill by $75 a month.

Now if I can manage to convince myself to get hosted email, I can resize my home network to be more inline with what an average home might have…

Nah… conformity blows. Besides, I like saying that I have my own Exchange server.

I Gave it 103 Percent!

NIPSCO seems to think I use an inordinate amount of electricity

So NIPSCO (our local utility monopoly) sends out these cool things that tell you your energy consumption relative to your neighbors. Well I’m proud to say that I scored 103% higher than my neighbors on electricity! I guess that’s what happens when you run your own web server and two Active Directory domain controllers virtualized on an ESXi 5.0 host, a Windows 2003 file server with over 3 terabytes of attached storage, an Exchange 2010 server, an HP 5300 series modular core switch, an Astaro / Sophos enterprise class firewall and a multi-VLAN network capable of keeping your guest network separate so that your neighbor who is using your wireless can get to the internet without touching your home network. That’s not to mention any of the small appliance-type things that round out my technical infrastructure such as my Cisco 1131 wireless access point, a Vonage analog telephone adapter, the cable modem, several large fans to keep the corner that my servers are in supplied with cool air, a satellite receiver with built-in DVR, oh and the stupid ink-jet printer that my wife insisted on having. (I preferred my HP LaserJet 4100, but she wanted color…)

So you see… Information Technology isn’t a job… it’s a lifestyle.