What's involved in running Ford-Diesel.com? - Diesel Forum

ShooterNew · 01-20-2001, 08:52 PM

Some of us folks out here don't know much about computerizing except for pushing a mouse around. It would be interesting and educational for Jason and the F-D.com experts to explain how it all works. A few questions ... How much electric power does this site use daily? How much space does the equipment take up? What is the value of all the equipment? Who pays for email to and from far off places, like Australia? How many more members can the present system handle, and what happens when too many join up? I'm sure other dieselers have other questions too. I can now play my piano untouched by human hands just by clicking on thousands of tunes available on the internet.
What next?

JLester · 01-21-2001, 04:37 PM

No idea on electric power. We have two servers, one with a 250 watt power supply and one with a 300 watt. Both servers have 700 volt amp battery backups for power failures.

One server resides at my house and connects over a 768Kbps Internet connection. The forum server sits at my ISP's office on a fractional DS3 connection. As for e-mail, there is no cost at all associated with transferring e-mail. It costs the same to send one to my neighbor as it does to Australia.

As for members, there is no limit that I know of other than disk space. We're still in good shape as far as that goes though.

Jason

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Ford-Diesel.Com Webmaster
2000 F-350 Crew Cab Dually Lariat 6-speed 4x4
Black/Tan 4.10LS Fully-Loaded

Super Duty John · 01-21-2001, 05:59 PM

Jason, I too have very little computer knowledge. What exactly is a server?.
Is it like the old IBM reel to reel things we used to see in Lost in Space.
Do you just have a PC hooked up to it or is it hooked up to a key board?

JLester · 01-21-2001, 06:01 PM

A server is just a really heavy-duty computer. The forum server for example has two 550Mhz processors, two very fast SCSI-3 hard drives, 512MB of RAM, and runs a Linux-based operating system. All the parts are optimized to send out data over a network as fast as possible.

Jason

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Ford-Diesel.Com Webmaster
2000 F-350 Crew Cab Dually Lariat 6-speed 4x4
Black/Tan 4.10LS Fully-Loaded

JLester · 01-21-2001, 06:03 PM

You can see more specs and pictures of our setup at:

<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>Ford-Diesel.Com Server Info[/list]
Some of the info on that page is not current, but is pretty close.

Jason

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Ford-Diesel.Com Webmaster
2000 F-350 Crew Cab Dually Lariat 6-speed 4x4
Black/Tan 4.10LS Fully-Loaded