The Server in the Vault

Deep beneath the community cafe, in the old Births, Deaths and Marriages registrar of Dundee, there’s a room most people never see. Behind thick walls, down in the basement, sits the original vault, once used to protect vital records. Today, it protects something just as important to us: our community server.

Down in the basement our community infrastructure is quietly doing its thing. The space where it sits is a bit special. Thick stone walls, heavy doors, and that unmistakable feeling that this room was built to protect important things. Long before Wi-Fi and hard drives, this is where the city kept records that really mattered. It turns out that makes it a pretty perfect place to keep digital ones too.

The server was designed and built with help from Dundee Makerspace. Their involvement focused on practical setup, hardware choices, and making sure the system is maintainable and fit for community use. We’re connected to full fibre through Fibrecast, Dundee’s local broadband provider, which gives us fast, reliable speeds without relying on a national provider.

The servers hum away day and night, supporting everything we host: projects we’re building together, services that help people connect, places to share files, experiments we’re still imagining. The vault used to hold records of people’s lives. Now it holds the infrastructure that helps our community live, learn, build and share in the digital world.

It’s not glamorous, it’s not flashy, but it’s ours. It’s local. And it’s here to stay.

This communication has been written by a neurodiverse person. If you have any difficulty understanding the meaning of any sentences or words, please get in touch for clarification. Your accommodation of specific learning disabilities (SLD) is greatly appreciated.