Tag: Gruntmods com

Recently we completed a move to a dedicated server. Rather than sharing a virtual server (VPS) with other users, this allows us to have consistently fast connections and full access to the CPU and RAM (with copious amounts to spare). d2kplus.com has also been moved to the dedicated server, however, the downloads are still served from a separate VPS to ensure optimal download performance. If you experience any issues with the site, please let us know.

On February 2nd at 3:13am EST gruntmods.com and its respective file server was the victim of a DDOS attack. Although we have measures in place to prevent automated attacks against our service there is no such thing as a perfect defense and as such the site was taken offline by our hosting provider until the attack subsided.

Several hours after service was restored at 8am, we again saw an increase in traffic matching the profile of the original DDOS attack. We have taken the following measures to ensure the server is as secure and functional as possible:

• Increased Security: We have raised the protection level with our partners at Cloudflare, bots and other automated systems will have a significantly harder time visiting the site and utilizing any services we offer
• New Server Instances: We have deployed additional server instances and reconfigured these with tighter security settings, to cover us against further attacks through other avenues.
• Server Monitoring: We have implemented file level server monitoring to notify us of suspicious activity on the file server. Going forward, additional monitoring will be put into place on both servers to notify us of any issues that occur before they impact performance.
• Server Redundancy: The Web Server is now located in a Toronto data center, and the file server is located in Montreal. This provides additional protection against issues with specific regional data centers. We are also working with our providers to establish load balancing, which will both improve speeds and availability between different regions, even during peak usage or through similar size DDOS attacks.

We are always working at providing the best possible service and apologize for any interruptions. Transparency is the best policy when it comes to these issues and I hope you continue to enjoy what GruntMods has to offer.

The migration is complete, if any issues arise (dead links etc), please let us know as soon as possible so we can resolve them quickly.

As for the upgrade itself, I will let the numbers speak for themselves 🙂

At GruntMods we believe in transparency, which is why I like to actively communicate changes going on with the site and upcoming projects. There wasn’t much going on for awhile so I haven’t made a news post in a while.

First off, the site seems to be picking up a user base, with the amount of visitors steadily increasing. A good chunk of that is due to new traffic to our YGOPro download page, but Dune 2000: GruntMods Edition is as popular as ever. I am very happy that the site has risen in popularity and I remain committed to making sure it and its sister site d2kplus are running smoothly.

On that note, I’d like to announce that the site will be migrated to a new server to allow the old one to function as a dedicated download server. This will not only increase the amount of resources available to the site but will also allow the download speeds of all the files available to increase substantially. As always, I’d like to thank our donors as they really help make these things possible in ways ad revenue can’t do alone.

Everything seems to be working fine in initial testing so the site will cut over at 11pm EST. If you notice any issues with the site or any downloads, please let us know through the contact form or by commenting here.

If you see this message it means our new server upgrade is complete. I’d like to thank our donors for supporting the site and making the long term hosting plan a viable option for us.
So here’s a shout out to each donor (in no specific order):

• Dale Coakley
• Ty Larsen
• Sebastian Maywald
• Ahmed Suliman
• Thomas Kuchel

And to any other donors who have donated to us in the past.

We also updated the site for D2K+, check it out.

The server went down at approximately 12:00pm EST due to a database corruption. Luckily, we have an comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan which resulted in minimal downtime for the site and CnCNet. If any issues arise please feel free to let me know so I can correct them.