About the Site and its Services
The Server & Hardware
This website is hosted on a private server in the northwest of England. The current system is a Lenovo P520, running Proxmox Virtual Environment with several virtual machines to split different services into their own isolated spaces. The system is backed up by an uninterruptable power supply (UPS), and a backup internet connection in case of any serious outages. The server boasts a Xeon W-2135 CPU, 96GB of RAM and a collective 20TB of usable disk space.
A Short History
The concept of this site was born in March 2012, whilst I was spending a month travelling in the Philippines. It amazed me how effortless it was to communicate with my family in real time across the internet, even though they were over 8,000 miles away. At about the same time, I learned of the Raspberry Pi and its recent release back in the UK. Quickly I placed an order for one.
In July 2012, the long awaited Raspberry Pi finally arrived. After a week or two, the small box was running a web server with this domain registered and pointed to it. During this time it was mainly used as a way to share files with friends. Finally in January 2013, I decided to build a website to learn more about the web and server administration. Soon after, the first articles were completed and published for the world's viewing pleasure. A year after first deploying the webserver, four simple articles had been written & published.
The original Pi model B was replaced in January 2017 after nearly 5 years of service. A newer Pi 2B took over, bringing increased speed and reliability. At this time, it was also coupled together with an uninterruptable power supply, which helped me to achieve over 99.8% uptime on a tiny self-hosted machine.
In July 2020, the Pi 2B was upgraded to a Raspberry Pi 3B+ which booted directly from an SSD. Due to increased power needs, a second battery was added to the homebrew UPS, and a custom supply circuit built from two 12v transformers replaced the former PSU. In the same month, a HP ML310e Gen8 tower server was added to run CPU / RAM intensive applications, including the Vervain's Arcadia Minecraft Network and a Matrix (messaging protocol) Synapse server. The new machine soon began to handle the bulk of the workload, with the Raspberry Pi managing some network services and acting as a proxy for all internet bound traffic. The HP was later paired with it's own UPS, this time a real unit not made from spare parts!
At the very beginning of 2025, the website and other services were moved gradually over to their own virtual machines on the new Lenovo server. With the rapid expansion of services hosted, the need for stronger hardware and better isolation of applications made the Lenovo and Proxmox configuration a no-brainer. A virtualised environment massively simplified backups, snapshots and disaster recovery, and the move to new hardware also phased out the home built electronics in favour of proper equipment.
Vervain Global hosts private services for the owner and his close friends.