02-Feb-2005 - www4 Server Replacement Announcement

News concerning Priority Colo, this includes network status updates, upgrades to services, new services, and general stuff you might be interested in knowing.

Moderator: Admins

Post Reply
porcupine
Site Admin
Posts: 703
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2002 5:57 pm
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Contact:

02-Feb-2005 - www4 Server Replacement Announcement

Post by porcupine »

Hi guys,

Well as countless people have noted, some of our reseller servers (eg. www3, www6) are substantially more powerfull then some of our other reseller servers (eg. www4, www5). While for the majority of users this makes no difference, as we simply under-load the older servers, some have expressed concern, and interest in having newer servers across the board.

We have investigated this option internally, and decided that to ensure that management overheads remain low, customer satisfaction remains high, etc. that we will be replacing the www4 and www5 servers complete with newer, faster servers, instead of simply adding new reseller servers (www7+) and migrating customers over time.

This is to serve as an annoucement of our intent to replace the www4 server. The specs of this have not been finalized as of yet, but the most suitable hardware candidate is as follows:

Dual Intel Xeon 2.8GHZ, 800MHZ FSB (will appear as 4 processors due to hyperthreading)
1GB DDR333 RAM (upgradable to 8GB max)
2 x 120GB SATA 7200 RPM, 8MB cache drives
Centos 3.4
CPanel/WHM (latest)

We will be scheduling the upgrade beforehand, and performing it in a manner similar to the www6 server move (hopefully a tad more cleanly, as we had some initial issues with the first attempt moving www6). If all goes well, the www4 server should be replaced with the new hardware around the end of February, with less then 30 minutes of total downtime during this replacement.

After that is done, we will replace the www5 server when time, resources, customer resource consumption, and popular request deems it necessary.

Regards,
Myles Loosley-Millman
Priority Colo Inc.
myles@prioritycolo.com
http://www.prioritycolo.com
porcupine
Site Admin
Posts: 703
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2002 5:57 pm
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Contact:

Post by porcupine »

Just thuoght I'd keep everyone updated.

The www4 replacement is slightly behind schedule, as the processors were out of stock at ewiz.com (our preferred vendor, which I can honestly recommend to anyone looking for a reasonable hardware vendor), and didn't ship out until earlier this week.

It seems that every time ewiz gets the Xeon processors in (about a bi-weekly basis), they get bought up within a matter of hours/days. I'm not too sure if thats due to insufficient purchasing, or simply a frenzy on the mid-level xeon's (2.8's and 3.0's, as the pricing has really come down a lot in the past 6 months, making them viable solutions for home, and servers; Especially when considering the benefits of 40% less power consumption then the P4 presscott CPU's [based on Intels published datasheets]).

Either way, I hope to be completing the assembly of the new www4 server early this coming week (as the processors should be in hand on Monday), at which point we will begin finalizing our migration scripts, and sending out a maintenance notice regarding the migration.

Everyone on www4, thank you for your patience, lets hope this move pays off :).
Myles Loosley-Millman
Priority Colo Inc.
myles@prioritycolo.com
http://www.prioritycolo.com
porcupine
Site Admin
Posts: 703
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2002 5:57 pm
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Contact:

Post by porcupine »

Well guys,

After what has turned into a somewhat painfull fiasco, we have the first of the new reseller servers online.

We started prepping the new www4 server (just OS install, etc.) earlier this weekend, and will begin prepping it to replace the www4 server later this week. I will release a more detailed timeline once we're closer to the switch-over date.
Myles Loosley-Millman
Priority Colo Inc.
myles@prioritycolo.com
http://www.prioritycolo.com
Post Reply