Here we grow again!

[Scott Greczkowski]

Things have been moving fast for SatelliteGuys! A few months ago we outgrew out Dual Xeon server and rented a server from another ISP to serve our ads. Also a few months ago we moved most of our images to their own server.

As of late we have been hearing from some members who have been reporting "sluggish" and "slow connections" and we have traced the problem to these two external servers which are hosted on a cheaper "value" ISP.

We want our members to enjoy the fastest and most consistant experiance possible, so tonight I am proud to announce that I have comissioned the building of our second Dual Xeon server which will be hosted in the same datacenter as the main SatelliteGuys site and database.

Our ISP (The Planet) is considered one of the best hosting sites in the USA and it peering is unmatched in the USA. Because everything being hosted in the same building on the same powerhouse ISP you will see a major difference in speeds giving you a better SatelliteGuys experiance!

The new server will host and serve all the HTML, PHP and Images, while our current server we are using now will be dedicated exclusively to serving our databases.

Now I am happy to report that when we add the new server you will notice NO DOWNTIME, the files on both servers will be syncronized so when we change the DNS to the new server you will be able to access the site no matter if its on the old or new server! (This will allow you ISP to process the DNS changes without any downtime!)

The cost of this upgrade is a little higher then we wanted to pay, however we have gotten a great deal on a new Dual Xeon server which we can expand in the future when needed! And in addition we are being hosted on one of the best ISP's in the country.

We expect this upgrade will be completed within 12 days if not sooner.

We thank everyone for their valuable input and for letting us know something was wrong.

We hope you enjoy the upgrade!

 

[korsjs]

this would be a perfect time for supporting founders to think about possibly donating again. i know everyone does not want to be hounded for money with the upcoming holiday season, but i think we can all agree this is a great site and if you can afford to kick in a few bucks, please do so.

click here if you are a supporting founder.

if you would like to become a pub member and support the site, click here.

 

[hdtvtechno]

Awsome Speed, Thanks

 

[T2k]

Our ISP (The Planet) is considered one of the best hosting sites in the USA and it peering is unmatched in the USA. Because everything being hosted in the same building on the same powerhouse ISP you will see a major difference in speeds giving you a better SatelliteGuys experiance!

The new server will host and serve all the HTML, PHP and Images, while our current server we are using now will be dedicated exclusively to serving our databases.

Now I am happy to report that when we add the new server you will notice NO DOWNTIME, the files on both servers will be syncronized so when we change the DNS to the new server you will be able to access the site no matter if its on the old or new server! (This will allow you ISP to process the DNS changes without any downtime!)

The cost of this upgrade is a little higher then we wanted to pay, however we have gotten a great deal on a new Dual Xeon server which we can expand in the future when needed! And in addition we are being hosted on one of the best ISP's in the country.

Khm, careful there, Scott - The Planet had a very ugly outage in last Spring; http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/03/31/outages_for_sites_hosted_at_the_planet.html
When I was looking for a prime, first-class hosting provider last Summer, seeing this outage I finally decided to pick Rackspace because they're really unmatched both in quality of service and quality of bandwidth, though for a premium price, of course. I'm so satisfied with them that I moved even our company website to Rackspace since then. (Second site is much cheaper, of course. )

Nevertheless I wish you the best with The Planet, Scott.

PS: Here you can always see the current provider rankings by failures, updated in every 15 mins; http://uptime.netcraft.com/perf/reports/Hosters

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

We were using the Planet when that outtage hit and it did not affect our site at all. We were lucky.

I looked at Rackspace, but am happy at The Planet and didn't want to pay for 2 new servers when the main one we are on now is a beast! (Dual Zeon 2.8Ghz, 4GB Ram, Raid 5 SCSI...)

After some confusion this morning we finally got the new server ordered.

 

[Neutron]

Did they have an option for Serial ATA?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

The new server has SATA drives.

The old server (the one we are on now) has Raid 5 SCSI.

This server will only be handling the Databases, the new server will do all the HTML, PHP and image serving. The way the backup is being done if one server failed we could be totally back online within an hour or so using just one server.

i am excited by this move.

 

[hdtvtechno]

i am excited by this move.

Look out guys
Have the fire dept ready on hold
Scott may faint

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Just got an update the server is now being built.

Here are the specs...

Server: Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz
Secondary Processor: Second Xeon Processor
Primary HDD: 80GB SATA Hard Drive
Secondary HDD: 80GB SATA Hard Drive
RAM: ECC Registered 1024 MB RAM
Number of ips: 10 IP Addresses
Bandwidth: 2000 GB Bandwidth
Uplink Port Speed: 100 Mbps Uplink
Operating System: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Version 3 (recommended)
Server Management Plan: Gold
Control Panel: cPanel/WHM with Fantastico - Setup: $0.00 - Monthly Fee: $25.00

 

[Michael-Berlin]

Scott, is this server for SatelliteGuys.US alone or is this a shared system for other websites?

My own server is a shared system for lots of my own customers. I make some money with website-hosting for companies

 

[LER]

it's ours alone, with multiple IP's.

LER

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Status Update...

Our server was ready for us in record time.

We have moved the ads server and image server over to the new server!

I have just changed over the DNS and it will take awhile for DNS to update on the Internet. (I did not lower the TTL as I was not expecting the new server to be ready for 2 business days.)

The ads server setup on the new server, as we will move the SQL database to the more powerfull server later.

 

[Foxbat]

Scott, I hope all works well with the SATA drives. They're fine for Windows XP Home, but not really designed to live 24-7 being wailed on by server I/O requests. SCSI is still the preferred local storage architecture for servers, until SAS (serial-attached SCSI) takes over. Some of HP's new servers have a clever drive bay configuration that accepts both SATA and SAS drives and can support mixed deployments if need be.

Also, I'm impressed that you have the new server in already. Is it a name brand, or is it a local fab?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Brand name, Its a Dell Unit.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Many of our members should now be getting the ads and images off of the new server, as the DNS change started propogating to the world early this morning.

To check if you are getting ads and images off of the new server you can ping ads.satelliteguys.us - if you are seeing the address as a 70.84.18.8 address then you are getting your ads and images off of the new server.

If you are still seeing the 209.59.162.163 address then you are still getting stuff off of the old servers as your ISP has not upgraded its DNS tables yet.

If you are getting your images and ads from the new server please report how the speed is, since everything is now coming from the same ISP.

There is a lot more work to be done, but we hope this is an improvement over the old setup.

I look forward to your feedback!

 

[Purogamer]

Servers don't take long to build at all, software installation should take longer than the actual hardware...

...and I hate when companies charge for cpanel...Plesk I can understand a bit but cpanel, come on man...and $25 too, sounds harsh to me but it's not uncommon anymore. Oh well, worth it if it makes your happy with the site performance.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I know Unix enough now not to need Cpanel, but rely on Cpanel still as it makes some things so easy to do. I like being able to have a control panel where I can look and see whats going on.

It also makes moving stuff between servers a breeze.

 

[Michael-Berlin]

happy ping-flooding

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I was going to wait til tonight but I decided now to move some files from this server to the new server. There will be some slowdown of the server when the server gzips the files for copying to the new server.

Speeds will be back to normal within an hour or so. (Figured do it now before the site became busy)

Thanks for your patience.

 

[Purogamer]

I couldn't post earlier because nothing on the site worked, so get ready to do a little damage control over the weekend from posters...