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:
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 ·
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
Paulc1964au ·
thanks Andrew thats awesome
vanderaj ·
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 ·
keep up the good work andrew. also a big thank you to the sponsors.
vanderaj ·
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 ·
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 ·
Thank you for your work!
matara ·
Andrew, I'm looking for a new VPS for dsk. Can you tell me who you use at Colo4
Thanks
Steve
vanderaj ·
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 ·
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 ·
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 ·
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
Paulc1964au ·
thanks for all the work i know how much time it takes, yes unable to access through the dns i just type in the ip address and here i am
ztnoo ·
Andrew,
Things seem to be working great here in Indiana , USA.
Thanks for all your efforts.
Kudos!
Regards,
Steve
Paulc1964au ·
Andrew,
might be worth telling everyone just to type in the IP into there web browser
vanderaj ·
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
azzatron ·
Everything seems a little "snappier" now.
Thanks for all the time and effort involved.
Cheers
vwjon ·
all is good over here in West Oz, cheers guys and thanks for your time and effort.
How do I fix this on my home puter
Not sure about the DNS stuff
Camo ·
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
Paulc1964au ·
it will come good in the next 24 hours once all the servers around the world refresh
OZ Towdster ·
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
General_Failure ·
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.
matberry ·
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 🙂
Paulc1964au ·
Matt,
I am with bigpond and it updated overnight I am now using my old bookmark
beetleboyjeff ·
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.
matberry ·
Just started working from my old favorites this evening. 🙂
Well done Andrew👍
Octa ·
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.