Gypsy hosting status

A quick note to anyone looking to sign up: we've reached the full capacity of the current hardware, so new accounts are temporarily unavailable. I'm in the process of buying new hardware (and rack space) and should have account signups open in mid-June.

This means I'll need to re-jigger the numbers for the account rates. I'm pretty sure that they won't go up, but I can't guarantee it. Current customers won't be affected -- but new subscribers might be. If you're sure you want to sign up and use the contact form to reserve a spot, I'll consider you a current subscriber if I need to raise the rates.

OK, folks: the moment you (all three of you) have been waiting for is here: Gypsy Hosting is open for business. For those ready to sign up, head on over to the signup form and get hooked up.

I've also made some knowledge base articles for people who want to know more details about the software we're running.

If you're interested in an account you should know that at first there will only be eight spots available. If there's overwhelming interest, I'll buy more hardware, but that will take a while.

So over a month ago I wrote:

I'm wrapping up the infrastructure stuff right now; we should be open for business in the next few days.

Yeah, I couldn't have even guessed how wrong that would be.

I think I've got that last few wrinkles ironed out — I finally figured out the email situation today — but this brings up a good point: this thing is and will likely always be a side-project for me. I'm excited by the level of interest in Gypsy Hosting, but I hope any potential customers know that this is a hobby — one I take very seriously, but a hobby nonetheless.

OK, back to debugging postfix. See you in a few.

If you're seeing this message, Gypsy Hosting is at its new home. I eventually settled on Wholesale Internet in downtown Kansas City (map); being able to physically access the facility is a big bonus.

I'm wrapping up the infrastructure stuff right now; we should be open for business in the next few days.

At Matt's suggestion, I'm also looking into Wholesale Internet since they're actually in Kansas City, only a 30 minute drive away.

If anyone's interested, you can check out the questionnaire I'm using when I call these colo facilities. Since searching for "colocation" brings up a (metric) ton of spam I've found it very hard to see what criteria other people are using to evaluate colocation services. So, hopefully this will raise the signal-to-noise ratio ever so slightly.

The last big decision I've got to make is what colocation facility I'll be using. These are the facilities I'm evaluating:

• Empyrean hosting
• ColoServe
• Forked.net

Right now I'm leaning towards Empyrean hosting as they seem to be offering the greatest bang for the buck, but I'm going to call all three and ask some qustions.

If anyone knows anything about these facilities or has suggestions of other ones, please let me know.

Things are moving along, albeit slowly.

In the software department, I've created this blog so that there's a single place to keep track of what's going on. I've also started work on a simple support request framework (in Django, of course) to handle customers. Once it's done it'll be released as open source; hopefully it'll become the base for a Django hosting panel.

As for hardware, the hardware has been ordered and I'm waiting on credit approval. It looks like there's about a two week build time after which I'll need to configure the box at my home before shipping it to a colocation facility. Based on that and building in some time for inevitable delays, I'm planning a go-live date of December 1st. Those who have already paid will get access to their accounts as soon as the server is online, but I'm not planning to have any of the support material ready before that date.

Speaking of payments, I'm about ready to start accepting them. I'll announce it here when I'm ready, and anyone who's sure they want an account can make half their first payment immediately to secure a spot. Of course, those who would rather wait until everything is live are welcome to, but I won't be gurenteeing hosting to anyone who's not pre-paid.