We’re Upgrading Our Server

Date: August 8, 2024
Category:

• Company News

Author: Mike Brinson

Many website owners don’t understand the importance of having their website hosted on a reliable, quality server. High-quality hosting services offer robust security measures to protect against cyber threats and ensure that stored data is safe. They also provide faster loading times, providing a better experience for visitors. Loading speed of the website is also a significant factor in SEO rankings.

Additionally, quality servers will come with excellent customer support. Elements of a website can break, and entire websites can crash, and these events often require the assistance of onsite professionals. We contract with Liquid Web, a company that is top rated by PCMag and other evaluators. Besides providing us with a fast, highly reliable server, they give us quality 24/7 customer support. There are much cheaper hosting options available. Some providers have shared hosting, which lowers the cost by storing multiple websites on a single server. While this is economical, there are serious performance issues. If one of the websites experiences a traffic spike or uses excessive resources, it can slow down or even crash other sites on the same server. There are also security issues—vulnerabilities in one website could affect all the others on the server. Moreover, customer support is usually strained.

Our Coming Server Upgrade

We have been using Liquid Web for over ten years, and have been very happy with their quality and services. They recently informed us of an upgrade that, with improving technology, we could purchase. We decided to take advantage of this so that we could continue to deliver state-of-the-art performance and reliability for your websites.

Here are the technical specs about the changes:

Current vs. New Server Setup

Existing Setup:

• Operating System: CentOS 7
• CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 Quad-Core
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 SDRAM

New Setup:

• Operating System: AlmaLinux 9
• CPU: Intel Xeon E-2336 6 Cores
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 SDRAM

Operating System Transition: CentOS 7 to AlmaLinux 9

CentOS 7 has been a reliable platform for close to a decade now, but has now reached the end of its support lifecycle. This means it will no longer receive updates or security patches, which could impact the stability and security of your websites.

To address this, we’re transitioning to AlmaLinux 9. AlmaLinux is a community-driven fork of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). It’s designed to be a drop-in replacement for CentOS, offering several key benefits:

• Ongoing Security Updates: AlmaLinux 9 will receive regular updates and security patches, helping to keep your websites secure.
• Enhanced Performance: The operating system is optimized for modern applications, which will improve the speed and efficiency of your hosting environment.
• Compatibility and Support: AlmaLinux is built to be fully compatible with CentOS, ensuring a smooth transition with continued support and a stable environment for your websites.
• AlmaLinux 9 Longer Support Lifecycle: We’re moving straight to AlmaLinux 9 instead of version 8 to ensure better compatibility with future technologies and software releases.

Hardware Upgrade: Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 to Intel Xeon E-2336

We’re also upgrading our server hardware to enhance performance. Here’s a comparison:

• Current CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 v6 Quad-Core
  • Cores: 4
  • Base Clock Speed: 3.5 GHz
  • Threads: 8
• New CPU: Intel Xeon E-2336 6 Cores
  • Cores: 6
  • Base Clock Speed: 3.4 GHz
  • Threads: 12

What This Means for Your Websites:

• Faster Load Times: The new CPU will handle requests more efficiently, resulting in quicker load times for your sites.
• Improved Performance: More cores and threads will enhance performance, particularly during periods of high traffic.

Memory Upgrade: Doubling the RAM

• Current RAM: 16GB DDR4 SDRAM
• New RAM: 32GB DDR4 SDRAM

Increasing the RAM provides:

• Greater Capacity: More memory allows for faster data processing and improved performance for resource-intensive applications.
• Increased Stability: The additional RAM helps reduce the risk of slowdowns and crashes, ensuring a more reliable hosting environment.

Summary

These upgrades will bring:

• Improved Speed: Faster load times and a better overall experience for your website visitors.
• Enhanced Reliability: More stable hosting capable of handling higher traffic and complex applications.
• Better Security: Ongoing updates and improved security features to keep your sites safe.

Our migration is currently in process and we anticipate having it completed by August 16th.

If you have any questions or need additional information, please feel free to reach out to us.

Thank you for your continued trust.

 

– Mike Brinson, Technical Director