An offer of help to FurNation from FurrTrax
FurrTrax.com is making an offer to FurNation.com to host that site for free for the next six months, until it can get back on its feet and figure out its own server space or other hosting arrangements. If that becomes a problem FurrTrax is willing to extend its offer within reason, or simply continue to host FurNation for a small fee, in the range 10 or 20 dollars, just to cover the added bandwidth usage on FurrTrax's pipeline.
FurrTrax can give FurNation a VM or Segment on our VMware System, which on Thursday, December 3, will become a Dell R710 with 96GB of RAM, and 8 CPUs, the PERC H710 512MB SAS/SATA Controller, and 6 SSDs (2 x 60GB, 2 x 120GB, 2 x 500GB).
FurNation would have its choice of Operating System, all FurrTrax would need is an ISO to pump into VMware and it would allow FurNation to install it remotely, as if FurNation were at the console using the remote management FurrTrax runs.
If FurNation opted, FurrTrax would also be willing to toss in one or two of its hard disks in FurrTrax's two empty bays, and then FurNation would have its own dedicated space and Disk I/O. FurrTrax does not rent this infrastructure, FurrTrax owns it and as such can make these types of accommodations. Though FurNation and FurrTrax have had issues in the past, this is FurrTrax's olive branch to bury the hatchet, and shine together.
FurrTrax would be able to allocate 32GB of RAM, 2-4 CPUs, and around 500-600GB of storage on the main server. If FurNation software supports the images and content being on a separate server, FurrTrax has its own CDN servers which have several terabytes of disk, and all that could be housed there without an official quota.
FurrTrax's CDNs are on a different provider to distribute the bandwidth load more evenly. The CDNs also have un-metered bandwidth, so no worries there.
Article author is founder, owner and lead admin of FurrTrax.com.
About the author
DarkXander (Xander Venterus) — read stories — contact (login required)a network engineer, furrtrax.com owner and Red Anthro Dragon from Chandler, Arizona, United States, interested in car racing, guns, shooting, horse riding, atvs, and general redneckery
Farm Raised, Patriotic, Gun Toting, Horse Riding, Mustang Racing, Proud American Redneck, lolol
Founder, Owner, and Lead Admin of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Holds 21 IT Related Certifications, All Current as of 2015!
Certified Computer Forensics Specialist
15 years experience as a Network Engineer
Comments
In Addittion i just remembered i have 2 x 146GB 10K RPM SAS drives i could throw in those open slots, and dedicated those to Furnation stuff, if they are big enough for the data, could Raid 1 them, or else leave them as seperate volumes, whichever u prefer.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
At first I thought this was actually the offer and not just a post about the offer. Even after that, this reads really strangely and I can only see it as an attempt for publicity. I'm a bit disappointed this just got published as is. And more than a little dismayed that it is written by the owner of FurrTrax (basically as a press release) and doesn't even carry a disclaimer.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
I would send the offer to Them directly, however their site is down except for the "why were down" page, and i cannot seem to find any other reliable way to reach them. They dont exactly have their contact info posted like i do. My hope is that they see this article, or someone tells them about it and then they see it. I even looked at their donation thing, and it doesnt let you send them a message either. I tried sending them a twitter tweet but got nowhere with that.
Have you a better idea @Rakuen?
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Even if that were the case, I do not think that's appropriate for Flayrah. I don't think the site should be used as a messaging tool and this reads to me like pure promotional material for FurrTrax, content which is not desired.
"What we don't want
Promotion - Flayrah isn't a good place for unfiltered promotion – if you want that, buy an ad. Feel free to post about things you feel are important, but try to make a proper news post out of it rather than just dumping the content of your blog post or newsletter here. "
I have plenty better ideas. The owners of FurNation are listed on Wikifur. One of them has profiles on deviantArt, Fur Affinity, SoFurry, Inkbunny and F-list. A PM on any one of those sites would be infinitely more appropriate.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
This was not a dump or copy paste from a blog post, and i didnt put it here just to toot my horn, I even had a skype discussion with GreenReaper yesterday or the day before about offering them the hosting after i read the text on furnations homepage. I am dissappointed that you see my post as anything other than an offer of commaradary towards a site who also happens to be a competing site.
As for those other sites you listed, i dont use any of them, i used to use FA, but i dont touch it anymore after the IMVU stuff....
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
I'm reading it the same way I would if VW published an article in the New York Times about all the things they do to reduce pollution or pretty much anything that looks like it comes from the marketing and publicity department. There could certainly be good intentions there, I'm not saying there aren't, but it would be rather naive to see someone talking about how charitable they are and not the suspect there's another motivation about.
Edit: Also there are things called intermediaries. You are in contact with Greenrepaer, for example. He happens to have an account on Inkbunny and could put you in touch.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
I think the complaint is unfair. It's a very narrow purpose post that says nothing about what furrtrax does or making any sort of an invite to try it. Also, Flayrah serves a community function, both of these sites appear to be community oriented (not run by outsiders and likely making little money beyond operation cost if that), and the offer is a community minded donation. I am interested to hear about it since we all know that furry sites arent the easiest to sustain.
Patch i sent ya an email bud.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Also thanks to whomever did some editting on my original post, im not an author, i know the grammer has issues, and what not, It reads a lot better than what i originally posted i must admit ;)
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
I would agree with the Growlithe for once. It does read like a press release.
While there is something in the press called 'informational offerings' that promote issues and causes. Usually those issues, offers, or causes are being served to the readers of Flayrah, not to one specific person that may or may not be a user of Flayrah.
I mean it's flatter if you think every furry reads it. But that couldn't be further from the truth. You'd probably get a bigger audience posting on you FA Journal (depending on the number of watchers you have).
Or, maybe contacting the person who runs it directly on a social furry site.
It's not even a well disguised personal promotional piece. You can basically take this article and replace the word "FurrTrax" with "I", "FurrTrax's" with "My", and "FurrTrax is" with "I am" and the meaning is the exact same, and it shows just how not press like this is.
If you know they are a user here you can use the Direct Message feature to contact them directly. I'm sure that'll get their attention more because even with me being here quite often that doesn't pop up too much.
What's next? Dragoneer posting articles on how he will offer free Digimon cards for those that leave their Weasyl accounts behind?
But while we're using Flayrah for blantent self promotion:
You can get a free digital copy of my updated Light Book here during MFF Friday to Monday PDT (http://www.amazon.com/Light-tale-Magical-Creatures-Zudukii-ebook/dp/B00UR4C2SC/r...)
We're working on rehashing the printed copy Fred, so I'll send you a copy after that is finished as I had promised on your review.
Sonious i can see how you might think that having the word FurrTrax in there so many times might seem like a promotional post.
However, My original post did not contain all of those FurrTrax words, some of them were added by crossaffliction to clarify things and reword things. He did me a service by fixing up my article AFTER i posted it, but not all of that was my doing, Check the revisions on the article and take notice.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Ha, ha, funny story ...
Because that's mostly what I did, except Dark Xander is more of a "royal we" guy, it turns out (note, Dark Xander, in the future, third person perspective is our style, even for press releases; the exception is opinion pieces).
Historically, Flayrah has run press releases; not our most popular feature, but this one could hardly be called an advertisement. Also, it covers a couple of topics we otherwise wouldn't have covered, so that's nice. Note that I did tag it a press release; I don't mean that as a "get out of criticism free" card, but some of the comments by Rakuen especially seem to have missed that. I did consider putting the whole article in blockquotes; perhaps in the future to further differentiate press releases.
Basically, my decision to run the story; only Green Reaper could overrule me, and he hasn't sent me any angry emails yet (well, "vaguely disappointed" is usually as fierce as he gets). Knock on wood.
Also, Sonious, be fair. If Dragoneer wanted to post articles here, we would run them. I don't think we need to worry about that, though. You and Rakuen have made sure that boat has sailed, as it were.
(Been a big day for big editorial decisions from me; Fred's article was submitted as "How can we not call 'Get Squirrely' a shitty movie?" Not in the headline, Fred.)
Thank you again, CrossAffliction for clarifying all of this for them, Much appreciated ;)
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Sorry. My bad. I won't do it again.
Fred Patten
I know that's kind of a hypocritical ruling of me, especially since I frequently (and recently) go on blue streaks in the comments (and Amidi Amid did it in his headline!), but I just had a gut "oh, no! not running that as is!" reaction.
I still very much think you should add a disclaimer. If you look at my comparison of site security it includes:
"Note: Rakuen Growlithe is a SoFurry Ambassador.
Flayrah, WikiFur and Inkbunny are led by GreenReaper."
Not because that affected anything but because it might and it might explain motivations. Knowing the author of a piece talking about a site's generous charitable offer is also the owner of that site is important in interpreting the article.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Okay, that's actually a good point, and will add that.
I put it on the bottom; that's where GR usually put it.
"If Dragoneer wanted to post articles here, we would run them. I don't think we need to worry about that, though. You and Rakuen have made sure that boat has sailed, as it were."
I know, because me writing about Project Phoenix is what made it fail. Or me writing about the Forum Exodus is what caused the FA Forums to go away.
I just write about what's happening. If they blame me for what is happening instead of asking themselves how it happened, well, things are just going to keep happening aren't they?
There's a difference between "blaming you for the problems reported" and "wishing you hadn't reported the stories". Let's not get too big a head, Sonious.
The difference between the two is much smaller than most believe.
wat?
Jeez, Sonious, this isn't a DC comics movie trailer.
It isn't, it's a Marvel one.
The difference between the two is ... wait, never mind.
:/ I'm not that hard to agree with...
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
But I am :)
Im thinking of naming the new server Spartan, not for a Halo reference however... With all that CPU, RAM, and SSDs it is the mother of strong high capacity servers. We already have a /28 and /29 subnets of IP Addresses for our Infrastructure so we can do a lot with it.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
I am sure the offer from furrtrax is genuine.
I have discussed this with some others helping out with the new servers, and we are taking it under consideration along with some other ideas that have presented themselves.
FurNation may be offline for a bit, but it is not gone just yet.
Please stay tuned for further information as we make progress...
Sincerely,
Nexxus
Webmaster@FurNation.com
http://FurNation.com
The new server is in my trunk right now, today im going to mount the 2 new SSDs into it, install VMware VSphere 5.5 and pre-configure everything so all i have to do is swap the SSDs from the old server into it and mount them and it will be done.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
We just survived another DoS attack by some wanabe, as you saw on twitter, he threatened, furnation, sofurry, thefurryforum.com, and others, last night he kicked his attack up a notch and made us intermittently go up and down but as soon as we kicked in cloudflare under attack mode and then put our Cisco 7500 into mitigation mode we were fine after that. All this guy did is waste an hour or two of time i could have been sleeping, and would rather have been actually. I have a fiancee to keep company, apparently the hacker is single with nothing better to do then MBate to the sight of the furry sites he fantasizes about destroying...
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
#fundfurnation Here is a direct link to the donation page. It redirects to the secure site. Spread the word! LINK: http://furnation.com/donate.html
Sincerely,
Nexxus
Webmaster@FurNation.com
http://FurNation.com
You may want to report this twitter user, as i already have, they seem to have snapped up your mailing address from somewhere and taken it to twitter. https://twitter.com/furrnationn
the more of us report it the quicker it gets taken down.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
The Drives showup as NON-SSD because their tied to a Dell PERC H700 Controller, its a firmware thing with the controller that they showup as NON-SSDs
See Below shows they really are SSDs
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Thanks everyfur for the comments on this.
I have had to make a hard decision. You can read more on the main page at FurNation.com.
Sincerely,
Nexxus
Webmaster@FurNation.com
http://FurNation.com
So im confused here, we offer you free hosting, so you can forgo the quoted 300 a month you have been paying in server fees, and you decide instead to shut down and kill the site....
Im not sure where you have been getting your server space however i pay what breaks down to 59.99 a month for each 2U Server i run, and half or even a quarter of one of those servers could run furnation....
I can understand if your tired of running it, but there are other ways to handle the situation. Even when i contacted you and hashed on you about your security, it was always, to get you to improve it, to better yourself and your site. I hearby extend my previous offer again, with the supplement that we will cover you for 1 year, and even assist you with operations if/as needed.
I am a PHP programmer, Certified as such, and I also hold Certifications in MySQL, Networking, Network Security, Computer Forensics, and many others. And my colleage/moderator Foxxer has simular skills. This is NOT something we cant handle....
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Maybe he doesn't want someone else to handle it? Maybe it's his baby, and thus, his choice. Maybe you should respect that choice instead of being an asshole.
Maybe Flayrah did a disservice to this fandom by posting this "press release", since it appears it was nothing more than attempt to have someone boost their own ego than actually HELP.
Well, on the "bright" side (of which there really isn't one), I guess we did the story's comment section at least broke the news the FurNation is effectively shut down at this point.
Flayrah - Where the real story is in the comments!
But seriously, it sucks when life does this to people. We shouldn't have to save every penny we get in case we get seriously ill or injured. What good is insurance when it is tied to an institution you can only partake in if you are healthy?
That being said, someone's probably going to have to do an article on FurNation now.
SYSTEM, go ahead and DirectMessage me if you want to have a conversation about FurNation and I'll go ahead and get something written up about it. If you had anything to add other than what you left on the site, which would obviously be linked in any write-up that occurs.
its always refreshing to see someone play the anonymous user card because they dont have the gutts to take ownership of their own statements when they make such obscene and valueless posts....
If you read the furnation sites latest post angry anon user, perhaps you would see he is letting it die completely, if it was his baby as you say, he would not be doing that, especially when the offer of free hosting with NOTHING in return still sits on the table.
Please take any further obscene comments and leave them off the site my friend.
Ive made numerous attempts contact whomever is the owner of FurNation, this offer was not made to stoke any ego, if they reply back and want to take up my offer, they could be back online this weekend.
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
I would say the baby metaphor is not a good one in general in this case. It is a website, one that is important to a few, sure, but ultimately it is not a life. It's code.
Even if one were to provide him hosting for free, there is the cost of time of running a community. And even then it's not free on the spirits. Running a community takes work, effort, and a lack of distraction. As the letter seems to indicate, he's got too much on his plate to worry about running a community, even if someone paid their way.
I've heard the furry community is charitable, but in light of this it seems kind of odd that we are willing to expend our finances to save a troubled furry website, and yet ignore the furry themself that is in need of charity.
Yes, because that's what this comment section needs; bizarre abortion metaphors.
Also, thanks Sonious, for volunteering for the FurNation-is-dead-article; I was going to make a stab after work, but now I can, you know, sleep.
I've seen what you do to someone who you're trying to help, when they politely refuse.
Why would I want to be a target of that?
And now you resort to slander, and inferring that im some evil person, with zero facts to back it up....
I run a website free to all members, that will never ask anyone to pay for membership or usage of the site. Im even running a donation drive on the site for a local member who is having hard times with epilepsy and seizures. And i have done volunteer work for the Shriners Childrens Hospital fund 8 years running including lending out my own network infrastructure equipment when they hosted lanparties, and never collected any compensation in any form.
So if you want to try to speak towards my ethics, perhaps you should remember to look in the mirror when you decide to judge me. Im not here hiding behind a anonymous curtain.
You may not like me, and thats fine with me, its a free country, but i dont act based how people think i should act, i do what i believe in, im not here to please the will of others. I treat people fairly unless they give me a reason not to.
As for you saying, "I've seen what you do to someone who you're trying to help, when they politely refuse."
I have not done any harm to anyone like you say here. if your referencing to twitter comments durring the mass DoS attack furnation suffered, It was erroniously reported at one point that i was the one taking that site offline causing all their downtime.
That belief was false, tho i wont say it was fabricated because i did try to report to them about an exploit i noticed on the site. And in hindsight i can now understand why they initially thought it was me since i quoted to them what was taking them down. Im a 21 time certified technician, its my job to know these things.....
END RANT
SUPPLEMENTAL:
Yes i am a competitor to furnation, and yes you could choose to think i am out to be the biggest best site, and i wont deny it, that is correct. But if i were to in pursuit of that goal cause any negative effects or render any attacks towards them, that does not make my site better, it simply drags us both through the mudd. I would rather do the honorable thing, and help my competitor be a better competitor, so they in turn continue to challenge me, and make me improve my own designs.
There is no honor in winning by forfeit, that is not a win, it is a failure in my eyes because now there is one less person to force me to improve and build upon my own success and innovate. If FurNation is indeed gone, i am not happy, indeed i am sorry to see it go. I fight very hard to keep my site running, and running well, and to keep it secure and safe from those who would attack it and do evil. And i take pride each and every day it is online, and for each and every attack it survives.
REALLY END OF RANT
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
It's a bit late (sorry, I had a sudden MFF), but I have some perspective on this…
About a year ago, we were wrapping up a donation drive for Inkbunny. I got a note from a person involved in a certain toy company offering to take over our hosting. Now, we have a fairly good tech team and we enjoy running our own server, so we didn't want quite what they were proposing. We also had concerns over data protection, since they are U.S.-based.
We ultimately figured something out that worked for both of us; they became the initial partner in our public-file caching network. If the discussion had been public, things might not have gone so smoothly. Such proposals are best presented and prepared for privately, although any relevant changes should certainly be announced to all stakeholders once they are decided and/or implemented.
Failing to take this step can make the proposed "beneficiary" feel like they are being pressured to do something they may not want to do. Coercion, however well-meaning, is not the best foundation for a partnership, especially when running what might be seen as a competitor.
Now, when it comes to closure… there's a reasonable argument that these communities serve thousands of people, and that the most important duty of their leaders is to ensure their continued existence, even if they can't be the ones handling the hosting or administration.
This is more clearly the case with non-profits - we've had several instances of convention organizations folding and "taking their ball" in terms of trademarks, even though the events they ran were essentially viable (this is arguably a failure of all board members to develop talent or override founders' syndrome in the best interests of the mission). But I think it applies morally to long-running private websites, too.
Flayrah is a case in point, having had many staff and leadership changes over its lifetime - as a result, it has survived and evolved beyond the need for any one person to dedicate constant time towards it. Which is a good thing, since life is ultimately a terminal medical condition.
That said, it'd only be prudent for a community organizer to ensure that the person they choose to carry on their work is suited to do so. Many would feel more comfortable looking to their own friends to find a successor - preferably, someone already active in their community. For others reading this who have such leadership roles: look to your own staff to develop such talent, before you need it… because you will.
FurrTrax will be getting its new PowerEDGE R710 tonight so we will experience some substancial downtime. Nobody panic or assume we have been attacked...
DarkXander
Owner of FurrTrax.com Furry Social Network
Post new comment