New server!

A new server was added to power up our sites.

The new machine is a brand new i7 server with 8 CPU cores and a whooping RAM of 24Gb running under Ubuntu x64.

The configuration was a bit more problematic than expected. The older server had all domains managed with Plesk but this platform was not supported on the new hosting and I simply couldn't afford the added cost for a plesk license at each month.

So, I've decided to try out the free alternatives to cPanel or Plesk. My attention was first tuned onto webmin and virtualmin since they allow to manage most aspects from a server quite easily.

However, the management of virtual hosts under Apache soon turned out to be an headache to solve. Some bugs occurred and then it became very difficult to get things working as expected.

Disappointed with Apache, I've turned my attention to Nginx as a web server. However, the lack of documentation and clear examples also led me to fail using it as expected.

Last but not least, came lighttpd. It's reputation for performance is well know and I decided to give it a shot. It turns out that this server has reached a very mature and stable level of performance and was only an apt-get away from being installed on the machine.

Out of the box came the support for PHP just like I needed. Adding a new virtual host is a task as simple as adding a new line on the configuration file and restarting the server.

As for speed, boot-land.net is now loading at a blazing fast speed. Lighttpd is serving static files at a really great speed on a far faster server than ever before and I'm happy to see it working well.

I still need to configure some other details. Luckily I didn't had any sites requiring mod_rewrite



Attached is a screenshot of the new server in action, feels really good to see all works being distributed amongst the 8 cores with plenty of RAM to go about.

The monthly costs for this server are really high, especially if we take into consideration that the older server was fully sponsored by R1soft for free and that now I'm supporting the new hosting costs on my own.

But I was unable to get in contact with them and the boot land sites were in dire need for better conditions.

Let the fun begin.

:)

Sponsorship from R1Soft

R1Soft is a well known company that is focused on server data protection in either Linux and Windows server machines.

I already knew the company after initially getting the top placement ad on the 911CD.net forum and later after acquiring the site.

The administrator of 911cd.net knew about our server woes on boot-land.net and was very kind to place me in contact with their company staff regarding the sponsorship of a dedicated server.

We have been experiencing really difficult work conditions since the past year as the site become more popular and started attracting more attentions. Now we are currently experiencing nearly 1.5Tb of monthly data transfer and over 150 000 unique visitors per month.

This frequently leads to "Error 500" server messages that keep everyone outside any of the sites hosted at boot-land.net

Yesterday, after some preparations and arrangements - the server was finally made available for our exclusive use.

It's a Pentium IV with 3.4 Ghz and 2Gb of RAM - more than enough to help balance our load.

Our current boot-land.net server is a tough survivor and has proven to resist several DDoS, frenetic spam bots and even supported the unexpected rampage of visitors over the years but heavy PHP/mySQL processing is still our weak point and they're slurping away all the available resources.

So the first step will be moving our databases to this external server as soon as possible.

After this operation is completed, it should be feasible to discuss and work on further features to take advantage of a fully dedicated server. One idea that comes to my mind is providing a much wider integration of winbuilder with the boot land community through the use of PHP to bridge the desktop software to the online world.

We certainly have more than enough horse power to discuss the improvement of boot-land.net so the future is looking very bright with no doubt.

As a conclusion note, my personal thanks to R1Soft, in particular to Mario Rodriguez.

You guys rock.

:)