As you may have seen me talking elsewhere here on SatelliteGuys is that our server is turning 10 years old.
Because of its age and the fact that we don't have the money to replace it I have started searching for other hosting options, which will not only insure we stay online but will also lower out cost of operations.
Over the past week I have tried a number of different servers and server companies and after being disappointed with them all I think I found one that may be able to host SatelliteGuys for many years to come.
The big change however is currently we are using a web software called NGINX which is built for speed. On the new server we will be using Apache for our web software. Apache is not known for being super fast out of the box... but I have been working (and still have not completely finished) tuning the Apache server for speed.
I am happy to report that I have now got pages loading as fast and in many cases faster then our existing server!
But there are a few things... the first time you load a new page it may be slower as that page was not cached yet. But the next time you or someone else loads that page it pops up zooming fast. And because only two people have been testing it (KE4EST and myself) we are not really putting a load on the server.
So here where you guys come in. We need as many of you as possible to test the server, the more users we can get on it the better we will know if this server will work for us.
Now I should note while we are on this server, I may move us to an upgraded server which has the same specs, however instead of 16 gig of ram it has 32 and instead of 500 GB (SSD RAID-1) of drive space we would have 1 TB of SSD storage (in Raid 1). everything else about the server is the same. So if we decide this is it and works for us, I will have to redo everything on the new server. Luckily I kept all my instructions for what I did so far.
ANd while we are moving, to start we are only going to take out a lease on it for 6 months, so if somewhere down the line its not working for us we can move elsewhere. (Or perhaps I an host it out of my own home on my gigabit fiber line)
So please try it out the address is next dot satelliteguys dot us. SatelliteGuys.US. and perhaps if you guys could schedule a time where a bunch of you cna use it all at once and let me know when that would be great!
Please give it a shot and let me know what you think.
Thanks guys!
Because of its age and the fact that we don't have the money to replace it I have started searching for other hosting options, which will not only insure we stay online but will also lower out cost of operations.
Over the past week I have tried a number of different servers and server companies and after being disappointed with them all I think I found one that may be able to host SatelliteGuys for many years to come.
The big change however is currently we are using a web software called NGINX which is built for speed. On the new server we will be using Apache for our web software. Apache is not known for being super fast out of the box... but I have been working (and still have not completely finished) tuning the Apache server for speed.
I am happy to report that I have now got pages loading as fast and in many cases faster then our existing server!
But there are a few things... the first time you load a new page it may be slower as that page was not cached yet. But the next time you or someone else loads that page it pops up zooming fast. And because only two people have been testing it (KE4EST and myself) we are not really putting a load on the server.
So here where you guys come in. We need as many of you as possible to test the server, the more users we can get on it the better we will know if this server will work for us.
Now I should note while we are on this server, I may move us to an upgraded server which has the same specs, however instead of 16 gig of ram it has 32 and instead of 500 GB (SSD RAID-1) of drive space we would have 1 TB of SSD storage (in Raid 1). everything else about the server is the same. So if we decide this is it and works for us, I will have to redo everything on the new server. Luckily I kept all my instructions for what I did so far.
ANd while we are moving, to start we are only going to take out a lease on it for 6 months, so if somewhere down the line its not working for us we can move elsewhere. (Or perhaps I an host it out of my own home on my gigabit fiber line)
So please try it out the address is next dot satelliteguys dot us. SatelliteGuys.US. and perhaps if you guys could schedule a time where a bunch of you cna use it all at once and let me know when that would be great!
Please give it a shot and let me know what you think.
Thanks guys!
