The Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant of $40,000 towards improving the Toolserver’s reliability. We requested the grant in April, and we are very happy it worked out. The background of the grant is that the most central feature of the Toolserver, live replication of the nearly 800 wiki databases, is far too shaky. If it breaks for a day or so, or we have any kind of corruption, we need to import a full new dump, causing days and weeks of outdated information for Toolserver users (and for the users of Toolserver users’ tools). It also means that during such times, there is no up to date off-site backup of the wiki databases.

To improve this situation, we plan to buy three new database servers, so we can keep two copies of each database, instead of just one. This way, one copy will remain available when the other breaks, and we will be able to fix things without too much interruption. The new servers will very likely be the same as our other newer database servers, namely, Sun Fire X4250s with 32GB RAM and 16 internal disks with 146 GB each. We hope to have these online some time in September or October. This should greatly improve the availability of live replication, and thus of any tools relying on real time information.