Interesting post on the memcached mailing list about how Digg are using Memcached for session storage. Memcached is intended as a caching layer, but after their session database crashed, they simply went with using Memcached for session storage period.

The new Geograph setup should wind up with around 10GB of memcached space across 5 nodes, and I was hoping to do something similar for session storage. It sounds like the Digg system barely broke a sweat doing this as their memcached nodes were already being hit much harder by their main application.

If it’s good enough for Digg, it’s good enough for Geograph!

I’ve done all the hard work, the servers are specified, they are ordered and now we must wait for delivery. Now is the time for that most important of tasks.

What to call them?

I think it’s a trait of all geeks to want to give their equipment cool or amusing names. At one of my first jobs in Newcastle we named our equipment after our favourite drinking establishments. I remember I had Trillian and Baltic. All of my own gear has Star Wars names. I’m writing this on Geonosis but it will pass through the frozen wastes of Hoth on its way out into the big wide world. My family photo album is on Naboo.

It’s not sad, just human nature, honestly.

Anyway, we’ve got 5 servers for Geograph, and I’m appealling to the happy bunch who inhabit the site forums to come up with the names.

I’m thinking rodent based names will be popular given our insistence the current server is powered entirely by hamsters….

CVS access at SourceForge.net has been shaky for the past month. Couldn’t check anything into Geograph yesterday, and the SourceForge.net Service Status suggests it won’t be fixed until the 12th May (though even that looks like a guess).

Looks like it’s time to migrate it over to Subversion…