RKS Restarting Operations, Plans

Many of you (former RKS members) has been waiting for this moment. RKS has formally begun regular operations once again. We had to close down for a few months due to a leadership problem; we were unable to invest enough time into RKS to allow it to grow. Regardless, we're back and I have decided to make some changes this time.

Former Members Program
All former members has been fully demoted. As it stands, none of you will have access to the member section of the forums. To regian access, you will have to apply again in the recruitment section. Former members of RKS who joined prior to June of 2008 are no longer considered RKS members and is not guarenteed immediate acceptance into RKS. These members are those who had joined during the First RKS. Members who joined After June 2008 are eligible for guarenteed membership status. However, you still need to fill out a application form for records. Those who had joined prior to June 2008, however applied again or took advantage of the readmittance program after June 2008 are also eligible for guarenteed membership.

Game Focus
We will be initially focusing on Garrysmod and Team Fortress 2 before moving onto CS:S and other game servers.

Geographic Focus
Our primary geographic focus will be on the East Coast of the US. You will however still get less than 60 ping out into Chicago (50ms), Texas (60ms), Toronto (40ms) and many parts of Eastern Canada, Mid US, East US, South East US. Pings of 90ms are reported from users in London and 70ms from users in Los Angeles. (All to VA Server).

Future Plans
To server our needs, the server that has been ordered is being hosted in Virginia, US. This east coast location is perfect for serving most of our users. In the future as the clan grows, we have plans to establish a server presense in TX and UK. UK presense is expected to be established by the end of 2010 while TX presense is planned for the end of 2011. *Update: Expansion into UK and TX completed ahead of schedule as of July 7, 2010.



Current RKS Server Assets

1. VA Primary Game Server (Daedalus) - VA, US. *Specs for what I originally ordered, what I ended up getting is better, but I dont have authorization to disclose it publically.- Dual Intel Xeon E5520 Quad Cores (8 Cores, 16 Threads)
   - 12 GB RAM
   - 500 GB 7200 RPM HDD
   - 1000Mbps Dedicated Connection
   - Windows Web Server 2008 R2
2. VA Multipurpose Server (Odyssey) - VA, US.- Dual Intel Xeon E5520 Quad Cores (8 cores, 16 Threads)
   - 12GB RAM
   - Dual 1TB 7200RPM HDD RAID1
   - 1000Mbps Dedicated Connection
   - Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard
3. TX Game Server (Prometheus) - TX, US- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Processor
   - 4GB RAM
   - 250GB HDD
   - 1000Mbps Dedicated Connection
   - Windows Web Server 2008 R2
4. UK Game Server (Beliskner) - UK, US- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Processor
   - 4GB RAM
   - 250GB HDD
   - 1000Mbps Dedicated Connection
   - Windows Web Server 2008 R2
5. 
   VA Web Server (Orion) - VA, US
   - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 Processor- 4GB RAM
   - Dual 1TB 7200RPM HDD RAID1
   - 100Mbps Dedicated Connection
   - CentOS5 32Bit

Current Monthly ExpendituresDaedalus - 339 USD/mo
Odyssey - 409 USD/mo
Prometheus - 139 USD/mo
Beliskner - 179 USD/mo
Orion - 179 USD/mo
Misc Licensing Fees - 60 USD/mo

Donations
From donation revenue, a total of 100 dollars a month would really help out. This will allow me to obtain licenses for further products and money to order more IPs, etc that will help out RKS greatly. This amount will also help pay off domain costs, etc. As such, we are going to agressively attempt to earn 100 dollars in revenue (operating at loss, however, there is a steady cash flow to keep the servers up) in effort to meet the objectives. This if far greater than what most clans of this size will use, however, there is sufficient funding to maintain this level of expenditures and therefore do not indicate that RKS is using too much money to stay solvent.