I’ve been managing Unix/Linux webservers now since 1999 and I’m closing the doors effective 12/1. I got into the business originally to teach myself Linux and though I’ll never stop learning, I’ve accomplished what I’ve set out to do. Another factor is the large amount of time I spend managing the servers and how little most people appreciate my work. I’m not talking about money but maybe a “thanks for spending 14 hours fixing my mega borked perl script that took your cluster down and affected all of your other customers when I’ve never paid you a cent in five years though I’ve raked in thousands of dollars from Google Adsense” would have been nice from time to time. Some of my hosting customers (both paid and pro bono accounts) were great and helping them with their sites was a pleasure.

But the real reason is that I just wanna get my life back. Earlier this year, I made a huge decision to leave a promising upper management position and it has paid off so far. So this is phase 2 of the life reclamation project. I no longer want to have to limit my hiking or cycling or just hanging out with my friends just becuase one of my servers might do down or Cpanel is going to release a new version that will likely break everything.

Additionally, the market and economics have changed considerably. What was once a pretty profitable and fun trade has become a mere commodity with the advent of affordable grid computing and cheap datacenter space.

This was an incredibly difficult decision (unlike the job thing) because this will have a significant impact on my paying and non-paying customers. For all of my customers, I will refund every cent of the money you paid me in 2006 and will provide extensive migraion assistance (i.e. I will do it for you if needed) to minimize the impact. The target date for shutdown is December 1st. If you host a website with me, you have received an e-mail prior to this and I will be giving you a phone call on Monday. I highlyrecommend the GS product from MediaTemple. 100 GBs of storage and 1 TB of monthly transfer. Plus, these guys really know what they’re doing. (note: I have no affiliation with MediaTemple nor received any compensation from them). They’ve been around for a long time and have a great reputation.

As for this blog, it will likely relocate to Blogger or Typepad, details will follow soon and you will be able to read RCS without changing your bookmarks.