Last Wednesday, March 20th, AVSIM met with and engaged an experienced team of IT specialists to aid in growing AVSIM and to maintain its robustness and responsiveness to our community in the future. They bring to our team skill sets that are applicable to our entire range of  our present and future architecture and systems. Together, we are creating a road map for our future growth and stability. We will be working on that in the coming weeks and months. We will be adding substantially to the road map as we optimize our current system and prepare it for future additional hardware and software tools. Some of the things will be doing in the future include:

 

Immediate Action Items:
Replace three existing hard drives in Forum Server.
Add two additional hard drives and configure for full RAID configuration.

Near Term Action Items:
Remove and replace all File Library drives with 1 TB units.
Add two additional 1 TB units.
Review MySQL database and optimize.
Review hardware; Switch, NAS', Backup Storage system

 

Longer Term:

Add G5 as Test Platform

 

Transitioning:

When available in 2014, transition forums and library to V4.0 software.

Reconfigure architecture to accommodate transition and improve efficiencies further.

 

Of course, all of this assumes we can afford them and be able to keep the connection to the net alive at the same time.

This is great news. It's comforting to know that this website and forum is looking to the long-term. 

V4 will do wonders for this site, and sticking that little bit extra data behind the site will just make is better

Ive been downloading from this site since late 90's in the FS98 days! Good to hear that the sit can continue to grow for another 10-20 years!!

Any thoughts of adding a premium service with annual fees?  I don't mind paying for FlightSim.com's "first class" and I'm sure that many of us regular Avsim users wouldn't mind helping to create a predictable revenue stream that could be used for system improvements.  Donations are great but unfortunately you can't count on them being there when you need them.

 

Charlie

Any thoughts of adding a premium service with annual fees?  I don't mind paying for FlightSim.com's "first class" and I'm sure that many of us regular Avsim users wouldn't mind helping to create a predictable revenue stream that could be used for system improvements.  Donations are great but unfortunately you can't count on them being there when you need them.

 

We have, of course, heard that suggestion before. I have maintained since day 1 of AVSIM's existence that we will never go to a "pay for" premium or subscription system. If we can't do it on donations and advertising, then that is an overwhelming statement by the community about its interest and support of this organization. We will most certainly get the message and close the doors, so to speak. I know that is pretty black and white, but... listening to people ###### about this site, even thought it is provided to them as a free service over the last couple of years doesn't encourage me to then have the "I paid you money therefore you owe me...." mindset. And I sure as hell don't want the "Tom Allensworth should resign and turn over the site to the community because we are paying for it" idiots either.

A premium service?  What more can Avsim give that they have not already done.  They have given this service free of charge all these years and they deserve much due admiration and praise. :Applause:  I thank them for all they have done for the community and what I know they will keep on doing as long as they can and I will surely donate to their cause.  Some can give more that others, and I believe if anyone uses this site on a regular basis, they could at least give something.  The world needs less takers and more givers.  If we had that, we would all live in a much nicer place. :smile: 

 

Thank you Tom, and all the Staff.

 

wtr49p

I believe you guys are doing a good job. It is nice to know that there is a grand community out there, that enjoys our hobby! Keep up the good work, Tom!