Copying, Compression, and Availability

Having completed CarbonCopy.NET this morning, I spent most of the afternoon and evening cleaning house on my webserver. Now that I have spent the day with my new hard-linked templating system, I'm much better off in many ways, but it is still lacking. I wish there was a way that I could hard-link a directory, to where new files that get added to the “virtual” folder subsequently appear in the folder's other locations as well. Right now, I have to re-run the utility if I add a new file.. Mind you, it's still a vast improvement from where I was at before, but it is still far cry from 100% ideal.

So at this point, I'm smack dab in the middle of upgrading the site. As a result, various parts of the Interscape network of websites may be unavailable throughout the day tomorrow. This does not include LonghornBlogs.com or PatchDayReview.com, which will continue to operate uninterrupted.

On a similar note, I'm attempting to increase the responsiveness of our servers. We're beginning to see a degradation in performance, primarily due to the less-than-ideal network cards, so I'm adding lots of caching and what not to try to speed things up a bit. I have a question for you experienced IIS6 guys.... is there anything else I have to do to configure the built in HTTP Compression? Or can I just flip the switch in the configuration settings? I'd rather get a straight answer before I try it than bork something up that takes time to fix. Any suggestions along those lines would be appreciated (don't tell me about other HTTP compression utilities or anything like that, I just want to know how IIS6's compression has been working out for people.) Thanks guys!