Online

[Some guy]

Sent you 10 euros.

[Robomoo]

Sent £10.

[icycalm]

The E3-1275v6, which was previously only available in New York, is now available in Chicago too, and what's more they have an offer currently in which they charge you no setup fee. So, as long as this offer still stands before our next rent due date, we can move to the faster machine with just $10 more per month.

https://www.nfoservers.com/order-dedicated-server.php (choose Chicago from the drop-down menu):

(Ignore the six-core processor at the bottom. It is actually slower for games like PA, Rust, etc. that benefit more from strong single-thread performance.)

We would be jumping from the E3-1270v5 to the E3-1270v6, with the benefits being going from 4.0 to 4.2Ghz and from DDR4-2133 memory to DDR4-2400. This is the fastest server hardware currently available for rent anywhere.

I will post again in the first week of January to see if we can get the money together.

[icycalm]

We should start putting the money together to upgrade the server.

First off, use this link to send donations from now on: https://www.nfoservers.com/donate.pl?fo ... culture.vg

This goes directly to our NFO account. Any money left over from one month is automatically used for the next.

Since we lost pXs, because we can't rent them the server anymore, we lost their $30, plus the $10 extra required for the new server means that we'll be paying $40 more per month from now on than before. Hopefully we can make it.

I am putting in $35 for this month. If we end up short, I'll put in more. So we need another $135, preferably by December 31, because setup takes 2-9 days, and our current server expires on January 9. If there are a few days of overlap, when we have both servers, it will make the transition smoother and recoil's job of transferring us over easier.

[shubn]

Just sent $30.

[Some guy]

Sent $15.

[Robomoo]

Sent £15. I just realised I forgot to use the new donation link though, sorry.

[icycalm]

I declined the payment. Send it again.

[Yurian]

Sent $30.

[Robomoo]

Sent $20 to the correct link this time, since it wouldn't accept GBP.

[recoil]

Sent $50.

[ChevRage]

Sent $10.

[earthboundtrev]

Sent $10.

[icycalm]

We have exactly $200 now, which is $30 more than we immediately need. I will order the new server on the 31st.

People can keep on sending, and it will pile in there for next month.

We could have gotten a second server with another $140. If we get another 5-10 clan members some day, this would be feasible. But for the time being a second server isn't really needed since Uberust has yet to pick up.


P.S. recoil, tell me again the exact version of Linux you want me to ask them to install, for PA purposes.

[recoil]

Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS

[icycalm]

I finally found the E3-1285v6 for rent. That's the fastest Xeon processor available, two steps up from the 1275 we'll be getting in a few days (maxing out at 4.5GHz instead of 4.2GHz). The cost increase is not huge at $200 vs. our current $170, but I am more concerned about network quality. Are these guys as well-connected, in terms of access to Tier 1 transit points, as NFO? And what about DDoS protection?

They have their own website, but I found them advertising in a forum, so that doesn't inspire me with confidence.

The advertisement: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1681273

Their website: https://incero.com/autoservers

Their location in Dallas is definitely good for us, because it's more centrally located between Europe and AU than Chicago.

I will keep researching. We are locked into NFO at least until February 9.

P.S. BE SURE TO NOT SEND ANY MORE MONEY INTO THE NFO ACCOUNT, for the time being. We already have 30 euros in there that will go to waste if we decide to move. I guess it wasn't such a smart idea to use that donation link after all. I was just trying to be more transparent.

[Kojiero]

My bad, I didn't see the last post and just sent in $30 to the NFO account for January.

[icycalm]

Well now we have $60, so we'll stay with this server for another month just to spend it. It's not a big deal anyway. Might as well enjoy the upgrade for a while before we think of another one.

[icycalm]

pXs sent $10, so now we have $70.

My new PA policy seems to be working. Fingers crossed that others follow their lead, but even if they don't, this is still better than nothing.

[icycalm]

I just realized that if we had asked the Rust clans for money, we might have actually got some of them to play lol. Because in the beginning, lots of them were signing up -- up to 15 by the end of the sign-ups -- and it is not unreasonable to imagine that a couple of them would have given $5 to play. And of course, after they had paid, they would probably have played.

Something to think about for the next time we try to make that event work.

[icycalm]

NFO has no more 1275v6s in Chicago anymore. We snapped up the last of them. Better think long and hard before we ditch it for something else.

It might be best to wait until NFO offers something better. Switching to an unknown company seems like a considerable risk, the more I think about it.

[icycalm]

BRN sent $5, so we are up to $75 for the next rent, which is due on February 5 (could not avoid a four-day overlap between the two servers, so our new rent date is four days earlier than before).

[icycalm]

NBT sent $5, so we are up to $80.

[icycalm]

After some more thought, I decided to stick with NFO for the foreseeable future. It just doesn't make sense to go to all the hassle of switching companies for a mere 2 or 3% speed bump at best when we are perfectly satisfied with our current setup. And NFO is bound to upgrade at some point, in which case we would be compelled to switch back to them since it seems like they have superior network access and DDoS protection.

So keep using the donation link above. I am going to add it to the OP for easier access.

[icycalm]

pXs sent $10. We have $90 now.