---
date: "2007-09-25T07:29:04Z"
title: A Slwo Transition to a New Server
---

<p>We're finally upgrading to a new web server.  I've spent the last week moving a couple of
domains a night from our current colo to the new machine.  We're getting a
massive hardware upgrade; the old machine is a 1.7GHz Celeron
with 512 megs of RAM, and the new machine is a Dual 2.8GHz Xeon with 2
gigs of RAM. </p>

<p>In addition to the beefier hardware, I'm also migrating us from <a href="http://exim.org/">Exim</a>
to <a href="http://postfix.org/">Postfix</a>, upgrading to MySQL 5, Apache 2, and PHP 5, and, most
importantly, segregating web, database, email, and nameserver bits into
their own <a href="http://linux-vserver.org/">VServers</a>.  </p>

<p>The net result of all of this will be a system that's more secure, much
easier to administer, and significantly faster.  </p>

<p>I'm particularly exited about the move to VServers.  We've had a few
"trouble" users in the past who used more than their fair share of
CPU, memory, or disk space.  With the old system my only real options
were</p>

<ul>
<li>ask the person nicely to behave</li>
<li>disable the offending content and/or lock out their account, or</li>
<li>fix the offending PHP/SQL/whatever by hand</li>
</ul>

<p>I was never particularly happy with any of those options.  With the new
setup, I can just isolate the offending user's content on a separate
VServer, and throttle whatever resource they're abusing to an acceptable
level.</p>

<p>There are other advantages, too.  A couple of past upgrades have had
"issues".  Specifically, a new package I need to install wants to
upgrade a bunch of core libraries, which, in turn, force upgrades to
daemons I'd rather not mess with (I'm looking at you, <a href="http://dovecot.org/">Dovecot</a>).
The VServers allow us to quickly create throw-away machines to test
upgrades and to isolate installations and upgrades to the services they
apply to.</p>

<p>Stay tuned...</p>