Searchyc is at least as reliable if not more reliable than HN, I think you'd be in pretty good hands there.
In all the time that I've been using it I think I've seen it down only twice, HN over the same period numerous times.
In all the time that I've been using it I think I've seen it down only twice, HN over the same period numerous times.
But then at least we do know for sure we need that search.
Would you commit to beefing up the system to whatever it took?
That being said, with a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and some software changes, SearchYC should be able to gracefully handle a couple orders of magnitude more traffic.