Munkunda Co-located

Yesterday we were able to "co-locate" our new webserver called Mukunda. What does that mean and why?

For many years our websites were hosted, along with many hundreds of other websites, by a company using shared servers. This eventually posed problems with other websites interferring with our online ordering. Coupled with the need to offer audio and videos of music and talks we took the leap and rented a dedicated server.

Over the past year, the amount of traffic or bandwidth has increased significantly due to increased usage, listenership and viewership.

Webster defines bandwidth as: " the capacity for data transfer of an electronic communications system"

As a result we were paying significant monthly overcharges for bandwidth. Further research produced a local server farm (see above photo) in Sacramento just 10 minutes from the Rancho Cordova community where we could rent space and bandwidth for our own server. ROI analysis ("Return on Investment" which is a corporate type term) indicated that, if we purchased our own server and software, installed everything, and located it at this farm, monthly savings would pay for it in under 1 year.

Led by Nabha, we forged ahead with the purchase. Now he is fine tuning the installation. We have 240 GB of hard drive space and backup.

This server will:

• Host the ananda.org, expandinglight.org and numerous other smaller websites. (not crystal clarity)
• Function as our email server and ultimately the backup email server for our new Exchange server
• Host the new Ananda Library
• Store much more audio and video web content to continue to serve our growing worldwide.