[Coral-List] list renovations largely complete

[Mike Jankulak]

Hello again! This message is partly to serve as another test, and partly
to update you again on the changes that Coral-List has been through
recently.

We are now up and running on a new server. The old hardware was acquired
in 2004 and reinstalled for this purpose in 2008, so this has been a
long time coming. Server memory has increased 6x and the number of
processors 8x, so it's blazingly fast compared to the older machine.

We began testing in ways that could impact list traffic on July 31st.
The path from there to here isn't the path I would have chosen in a
perfect world, and we were sideswiped mid-way through when it became
apparent that insane volumes of spam were rendering our firewall
inoperable, so we've been rushed to completion in a manner that was less
graceful and measured than I would have preferred.

That's a fancy way of saying there may yet be kinks to work out, and I
would appreciate your continued patience. Also please continue to
contact us if you experience any problems either with missing/delayed
messages or with the http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov web site. You're welcome
to email us either at <coral-list-owner at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> or by
contacting me directly if you prefer. Remember that if you have any
questions about whether you've missed any message or if your own message
has been forwarded, your best bet it to check out online archives:

http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/pipermail/coral-list/

To counterbalance the benefits of being on a new server, we have a new
problem: our "identity" changed in a subtle way when we migrated to a
new firewall. Our email headers carry the same name but a different IP
address. This appears to have severed some longstanding relationships
with our subscribers' servers and has led to an increase in delayed and
rejected messages.

One way I'm trying to work around this problem is by reducing how many
subscribers can be cc:ed on a single message.  Right now the list is
cc:ing 1/100th as many people per message, which of course means that we
need to send out 100x as many copies. Before we finished migration
(yesterday, August 16th) this increase in outgoing traffic was greatly
delaying our outgoing mail, far more so than I'd realized. You may have
received Coral-List messages two or three days after approval this week.
I think today that delay is closer to one hour on the new server, but
I'm going to watch things and continue to tinker with the settings.

At this point I hope and expect that I've said all that I need to say
publicly on this topic. There are some more improvements planned and I
will speak up if further disruptions are anticipated, but for now I will
leave you to our usual coral-centric discussions and debates.

Mike J+, coral-list whisperer