Infrastructure

2026-05-22 Linodes Akamai Cloud Manager

The Jacksonville Linux Users Group Inc. is proud to announce the new JaxLUG Infrastructure Project, where not only will we be providing infrastructure resources to support the needs of the community, we will also be extending that even further to educational infrastructure for the community. In fact, the entire purpose of the JaxLUG Infrastructure Project is for community educational purposes.

Would you or someone you know like to learn:

This is what the JaxLUG's Linux Infrastructure Project will be offering, for FREE! You want to learn, we will provide the resources and most importantly, over two and half decades of experience and wisdom. Come learn from and work with the best most experienced Linux administrators, developers, and users in the North East Florida Metropolitan Area!

Servers

The JaxLUG operates five servers, virtual machines (VMs) called Linodes, in Akamai Cloud, running the following four categories of server software providing related services. These servers are available to members for learning purposes in addition to routine community utilization. More servers will be added in the future as the communities needs grow and the JaxLUG's financial resources grow.

DNS

The JaxLUG operates two domain name servers (DNS) ns1.jaxlug.ngo and ns2.jaxlug.ngo. These servers are located in two different geographic regions, on each coast of the United States, East and West.

Mail

The JaxLUG operates a single mail server mail.jaxlug.ngo located on the East Coast of the United States, running unencrypted smtp and encrypted imap protocols.

Matrix

The JaxLUG operates a single matrix server matrix.jaxlug.ngo located on the East Coast of the United States.

Web

The JaxLUG operates a single web server www.jaxlug.ngo located on the East Coast of the United States.

Credit

2024-01-06 William Thomson Obsidian-Studios Former Network

The JaxLUG infrastructure is a donated network from William L. Thomson Jr. who has operated this very network since 2000 first starting in Santa Rosa, California at Sonic.net on a collocated Cobalt Networks RaQ4r Linux appliance and then later relocating to Jacksonville, Florida in 2003, first operating out of his residence on his own Cobalt XTR and donated desktops, then in 2008 into a local datacenter Peak10 using rack mount servers. In fact, the JaxLUG used to utilize these very servers and this network when William hosted jaxlug.org and related resources, until the 2013 Coup d'état.

In 2014, William moved away from physical servers, and private cloud, at Peak10, to at first Rackspace, also AWS, and later, finding a home at Linode due to their superior Linux geek offerings, such as Lish with Finnix and all native IPv6 network, where the servers have operated continuously since; now being owned by Akamai is further affirmation of choice. It is unfortunate that the JaxLUG moved away from these resources long ago, but now they are back, and more coming to benefit the community in ways unlike ever before.

In 2024, William terminated his past business Obsidian-Studios, Inc. and scaled down what remained of the network, he continued to maintain as his personal, but had plans to terminate, until he found new utility in donating the network to the JaxLUG for the benefit of the community. William will cover the expenses for the foreseeable future, as he has for over two and a half decades, never once losing a domain name or any data, William still has archive of the old JaxLUG VM from 2013 ...

Hopefully, by 2027, funding will be secured to ensure this network exists for many years to come, and ideally, through a partnership and sponsorship from Akamai, but we have ability to raise funds and cover the resources regardless. If Akamai wants some good PR that is entirely up to them, not to mention, giving some Linux newbies their first hit of Linux for free, only to hook them as a paying Linoder for decades to come!