So, I finally completed the transition from the “dinky” 10Mbps choke hold that was the Hidayah Online server to the mammoth, unmetered 20Mbps Grand Canyon that is the Audio Islam server. I achieved this merely by redirecting all download links to their appropriate locations on the remote server. This way, all old links to the audios (and believe me, there are more than one would think) will transparently map to their new homes, assuming the user agent, be it a browser, a download manager, or a search engine crawler, support standard HTTP 307 code redirects. Once I’ve grown confident the redirects are working at an acceptable level, I will probably convert the redirect code to the more suitable 301 response code.
The point of no return – crossing the Rubicon, if you will, is best depicted by the following visual aides:
Hidayah Online server
Audio Islam server
If one observes carefully, and does some simple arithmetic, it will become clear that the downloads were actually choked by the Hidayah Online’s connection, while they rarely, if ever, actually surpassed the capacity of the Audio Islam server. This is initially something to take as good news, but if one dwells on it, the dark realization that fell upon me last Ramadhaan should arrive as well – I’m going to need yet another – and faster – server to handle the load for next year, in shaa Allaah.
So there you have it. If you are interested to know in more detail how exactly the migration went, either stay tuned for a full describe or ask directly. I don’t have much time to blog these days, but I’m more than happy to talk tech whenever I get the chance.