I've begun the task of moving some of the websites hosted on my aging Sparc system to the more generously apportioned Intel-based system.

The Sparc is still (as of this writing) hosting this site, but a handful of other sites running software like this one have been successfully moved. I debated whether to test with my site first, but realized how messy my web structure is because of all of the other testing I do here. I moved a couple photo sites first, recognized a couple of the differences in paths that were going to kick me in the head all day long, and then moved a few blog sites.

I set up the Sparc about ten years ago, and it truly needs a few upgrades, like a newer version of Solaris, or retirement. It does serve some other purposes internally, so it probably won't go away; it's just losing it's job as an Internet web server. Plus I think it's a little cool to have some off-the-wall hardware floating around, even if it isn't the same as could be purchased today (and don't get me started on what's happened with that since Oracle bought Sun).

The Intel server has just a hair more RAM (2GB instead of 1.6GB), but a boatload more drive space (250GB instead of 40GB), and a much faster processor (nearly 2GHz instead of 500MHz). Plus it's been configured with a more aggressive software firewall than the Sparc (which is relying mostly on the NAT and port-forwarding from the SOHO router it hides behind). I suppose the better thing to do is to properly assign my under-used, over-powered desktop (with its 8GB of RAM,+2GHz dual-core, and 500GB drive space) to server duty, but that'll happen when I upgrade to a quad-core and trickle-down.

There are a few place-holders and other static sites that have been moved, too. Easy as pie, those are. Copy files, update the web server configuration files, change DNS, wait for propagation. I even got the stats server updated with the cached data for the sites moved to the new servers, so come tomorrow when they update (including one that I'd forgotten from the beginning), they'll look like they've always been served by the same system (stats-wise, anyway).

There's a few sites left to move, each with increasing trickiness. I'm in the middlle of moving one with a 200MB database behind it (500MB with indexes...the next runner-up is just crossing 20MB, including indexes, and that one's got image blobs in the database--not my idea).

There are a few JSP-driven sites I've tapped together that aren't packaged and deployed as WAR files, which would make the management so much better. Who knows, though, if I have any of the source, so I've got to see about packaging them by hand instead to deploy them correctly, or pollute my new server with the same old mess.

And then there will be the task of thinning my past experiments from my personal sites.

In all, a good few days' distraction.