The older you get, the more susceptible you are to reliving the past; particularly if your past is filled with pleasant memories... aka Nostalgia.

I've owned the mtonetwork.com domain since 2006 and have used it with various websites over the years for development projects. In 2018, shortly after being bitten by the BBS bug again, the MTON domain finally found a permanent home supporting the BBS renaissance taking place in the 2nd decade of the 21st century. The MTON will support the BBS renaissance and be the parent website to the Rust Belt BBS [ rbbbs.mtonetwok.com ].

I had someone ask me a few weeks ago what the MTO represents as it does appear to be an acronym. And an acronym it is... 'Miller Time Online = MTO'... The old catchphrase from the Miller brewing company for its incredibly generic beer. It's Miller Time and it's where the fun happens... Apparently!

 

The MTON website is hosted by a very reputable and technically superior provider. The current server was commissioned on August 16, 2021.

CPU	Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 5120 CPU @ 2.20GHz (4 core(s))
Version	Plesk Obsidian v18.0.40_build1800211207.16 os_CentOS 8
OS	CentOS Linux 8.5.2111

The BBS is currently operated inside the personal space and networks of my home in Rochester, New York. The BBS was launched in March of 2019 shortly after moving to Western New York.

 

The Rust Belt BBS is using the latest Windows 32bit version of the Mystic BBS software package. Mystic has proven to be a swiss army knife in the BBS world as it exists today. Mystic works right out of the box with no 3rd party requirements to get online for the first time. The BBS machine(s) run from a VMware 6.7 cluster. There are two Windows 10, 32bit BBS VMs; Primary and Replica.

 

Information Security:

Norton Security is used to protect all machines, physical or virtual, on our network. To save money on subscription costs, we purchase our annual renewals on Amazon rather than directly from Norton. Saves us about $70 a year.

 

Data Protection:

For our VMware machines, we are using the Veeam Backup and Replication tool. VM snapshots of the BBS machine are captured every four (4) hours and replicated to the standby VM. Using the replica strategy for our BBS machine, if there is a hardware failure that interrupts the BBS, we can failover to the replica and have the BBS back online within five (5) minutes. There is also a CPS file-level backup process that runs on the BBS machine that allows for the recovery of loose files and folders if the need arises. And last but not least, there is a Synology NAS device that provides a RAID 1, 7TB volume that is iSCSI mounted to the VMware cluster. The total strategy is not 100% foolproof but I like my odds.