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Administrivia: New server is here!

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vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831043
Hi there,

There will be some downtime to allow us to migrate to a new server. This server has hosted us well for the last three years, but it's time for an upgrade to a more modern OS.

In other news, the new forum software that I bought a few months ago has made 1.0 status. I need to write a convertor for it and make sure everything converts across, but once that happens, the forum software will also change. This will most likely happen in the April / May timeframe. If you want to see that software in action, it's here:

http://xenforo.com/community/

If you come across themes, smileys or modules you like for XenForo, please PM me and I'll try to get it included in our initial install.

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831254
Our new server has been provisioned.

The specs are as follows:
  • Same hoster, but now located in LA rather than Dallas, so latency reduced from 330 ms to 180 ms)
  • Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (was CentOS 5.0 with customized LAMP packages as CentOS 5.0 is prehistoric)
  • 16 x Intel Xeon E5620 processors running @ 2.4 GHz, 12 MB L3 cache (up from 16 x E5520 @ 2.27GHz, 8 MB L3 cache)
  • 1.5 GB of RAM (up from 768 MB)
  • 60 GB of disk (same)
  • 3 TB of bandwidth per month (up from 2 TB/mth. We use like 50 GB/mth)
It's running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and thus has support for about another four years.

Performance should be a tad faster:

- More recent kernel + up to date software does that
- MySQL 5.1 allows the use of cache with prepared statements (which we use)
- Latest version of APC is running, so performance should be good out of the box
- faster processors (about 15% faster)
- more RAM, so I can cache more of the hot data in memory and have more Apache instances running

However, I have noticed disk writes seem to be a bit slow. Hopefully, the caching features I've noted above will hide this from us.

There will be a backup taken tonight of everything, and possibly some downtime over the weekend. I'll let folks know when it's closer to time.

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831257
p.s. I need to mention that without the help of our sponsors, none of this would be possible, like helping subsidize the purchase price difference between my old dying Mac and my new MacBook Air 11.6, to provisioning the new server and buying the new forum software.

A Big THANKYOU! to all our sponsors!

thanks,
Andrew

barls Administrator Causer of Chaos and Mayhem

9,473 posts · joined Jun 2004 ·

#831265
keep up the good work andrew. also a big thank you to the sponsors.
“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.” Bill Hicks
the chaos project - click me

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831266
I thought we'd see about a 15-30% difference in performance. It's actually a bit more than that:

Old:
Requests per second:    240.05 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       20.829 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       4.166 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          6059.98 [Kbytes/sec] received
New:
Requests per second:    435.91 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       11.470 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       2.294 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          11019.55 [Kbytes/sec] received
Yes, that's a 2x improvement in local raw performance. Awesome.

YMMV when using it from this side of the pond due to networking delays, etc.

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831267
Just in case folks remembered our first shared hosting environment, that box maxed out at 20 requests/second. And we thought that was pretty good.

thanks,
Andrew

annosL Officially Full-On Dubber

378 posts · joined Dec 2008 ·

#831316
Thank you for your work!

matara Custom Title Time!

1,342 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831334
Andrew, I'm looking for a new VPS for dsk. Can you tell me who you use at Colo4

Thanks

Steve

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831346
Hi Steve,

We use Future Hosting. They've been decent. Can't say too much about their support as I've not needed it all that often (usually for once off things like the last server move), but the price is right. 🙂

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831347
Our new server is up and running.

DNS changes will take a little while to propagate - up to 24 hours in some cases. My own ISP is still telling me that I should be using the old IP address.

I'll check again in the morning, but hopefully things will be sorted out very soon.

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831348
Steve,

Actually, I'm using their support right now to resolve the DNS issue. Very fast response - only six minutes to say "hi I'm looking at your ticket."

thanks,
Andrew

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831349
Hi all,

Sorry for the delay in getting this fixed, but I have had to re-delegate the DNS servers to our hoster's new DNS servers so you could see our new server. This has been done.

Unfortunately, of all the changes to DNS, re-delegation is the slowest to propagate. Some of you will be here now. Some of you will not be able to see the forum for days. My apologies for this. Re-delegation is rare and was not in my mind of migration steps at all.

Anyway, the changes have been done, and there's nothing for it, but to wait. 🙂

thanks,
Andrew

ztnoo Insano Dub Head

730 posts · joined Aug 2007 ·

#831355
Andrew,
Things seem to be working great here in Indiana , USA.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Kudos!
Regards,
Steve

Fine tuning the proper daily ratio of Maxwell House to Bacardi 151.........

* Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia !

vanderaj Administrator a suffusion of yellow

3,130 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831357
Paul - I've done that in the instructions on the old server.

Using the IP stops "remember me" logins from working, so I'd prefer the hosts entry approach.

thanks,
Andrew

vwjon Fahrvergnugen

914 posts · joined Jul 2006 ·

#831370
all is good over here in West Oz, cheers guys and thanks for your time and effort.
3 1959 cadillacs
1 musso
2 early notchbacks
2 split kombis
2 split panels
1 split ute
1 low light panel
1 ex-pmg bay
1 country buggy
1 beetle ute
1 14" syncro caravelle
1 16" syncro doka
1 golf cabrio
1 vw camper trailer
2 3meter bombs

annosL Officially Full-On Dubber

378 posts · joined Dec 2008 ·

#831371
Working great! thankyou

Bizarre Moderator The artist formerly known as blue74l

12,785 posts · joined Aug 2002 ·

#831374
I can get in by typing in the IP address

I have saved this

I can get in the "normal" way on my work puta - www.aussieveedubbers.com

How do I fix this on my home puter
Not sure about the DNS stuff
Futue te ipsum!!!

Camo Custom Title Time!

1,936 posts · joined Oct 2007 ·

#831399
I appreciate all the work, but it took me 10 hours on and off trying to find the fricken site. I only found it by doing a google search (aussieveedubbers) and narrowed it to the last 24 hours.

There must still be a lot of pissed off people out there.

Sorry, but we do not have good (not great) computer skills.

Thanks again, Kevin
I thought rebuilding a VW would be cheap - Shit I was wrong, just don't let the wife know !!!!

Click here for my (slowy) modded 1961 Beetle build.

OZ Towdster Keen to finish some projects

1,921 posts · joined Dec 2003 ·

#831474
Great new speed Andrew , but i'mm having trouble with the fact that if i close the site for more than a few minutes that it logs me off which on the old server it never did except for the breif period that it was doing it to a few of us 18 months ago
Don't let body work get in the way of real suspension travel

General_Failure Use your head, don't abuse it!

1,036 posts · joined Jun 2004 ·

#831509
Awesome. I don't feel like making a cuppa between page loads now. it's really snappy! I look forward to seeing the future changes too.
If at first you don't succeed. Build, build again.
Vehicle: 1975 Special order delivery walkthrough panel based LCA pop-top camper. Motor: Nippon 1.8L Single port Wasserboxer, Transmission: 3 rib 002.

matberry Moderator Go hard or go home

8,114 posts · joined Mar 2006 ·

#831511
Paulc1964au wrote:it will come good in the next 24 hours once all the servers around the world refresh
Is this going to happen? I have to cut and paste into the address line, a string of numbers that Brad posted on the Manx forum !!!🤪

It does seem nice and quick though 🙂
Matt Berry Motorsports...air cooled advice, repairs and mods Ph 0408 704 662
OFF-ROAD,CIRCUIT,DRAG,STREET,ENDURANCE

beetleboyjeff Custom Title Time!

1,790 posts · joined Feb 2009 ·

#831620
I couldn't log on at all last night, then my home computer logged on OK this morning when I was in Port Macquarie, but my laptop wouldn't. I have now just fired up my laptop in Orange, and it logged straight on.

It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. :-)

Great job Andrew. Keep up the good work.
From your ole' mate Jeff

matberry Moderator Go hard or go home

8,114 posts · joined Mar 2006 ·

#831626
Just started working from my old favorites this evening. 🙂

Well done Andrew👍
Matt Berry Motorsports...air cooled advice, repairs and mods Ph 0408 704 662
OFF-ROAD,CIRCUIT,DRAG,STREET,ENDURANCE

Octa veedub recluse

406 posts · joined Mar 2005 ·

#832414
It is fast.. well done!

oh, Bizarre... if you only knew Spanish you would realise what you just said "
on your post on 19-3-2011 at 13:06 above... just translate that one word and you'll be LOL.
'We teach best what we most need to learn'

VW no more... sigh.... well, at least it's a cousin