As many of you already know, I live in a constant state of upgrade.  That's right, I constantly strive to make things better, prettier or easier for both DesertMoonCircle.com and my own home office and networks.  Some would say it's an obsession, but I call it an art.  Anyway, I have some changes planned for DesertMoonCircle.com - yes, upgrades once again - but they are sweeping in scope and require a bit more planning than any of the previous upgrades.  This has resulted in a necessity to re-arrange and rebuild the various servers and support systems that reside on the disconnected back end of DesertMoonCircle.com - my home office, and in this process I intend to do some refining of the technologies that I have used for years to whip up a more "professional" system.

First and foremost in the lineup was our backend connection to the internet.  I am constantly accessing the website and approving or removing items from the forums or the front page news sections and such.  This takes time, and although I could chunk out a bunch more cash for a "business grade" internet connection, it made more sense economically to try to find a way to better optimize our usage rather than just ramp up the raw speed.  To do this, I planned to introduced a new internet gateway server into the network, utilizing the new Threat Management Gateway software from Microsoft that provides internet access caching and firewalling abilities.  TMG is basically the 2009 version of Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA), but revamped for 64-bit and the speed enhancements of newer processors.  So now I would have an edge firewall and caching system in place, but I couldn't risk exposing information by having internal server systems running on the very same gateway, that is a huge security risk as TMG's primary goal is to protect the interior of the network, with everything behind it's firewall.  Having internal server systems sit side by side with TMG would defeat that purpose.

So now I have to introduce a forward caching DNS server and a DHCP server to provide the infrastructure necessary to hand out the necessary settings to each of the network clients to actually use the TMG's caching abilities, yet allowing all of them unrestricted and speedy access to the internet, all while keeping them tucked safely away behind the firewall.  So yet, another server is needed.  Oh boy, that's a lot of hardware.  Or, maybe not...