New drive options: bigger, faster Intel SSDs!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Glenn Enright

Intel recently released their new generation of 330 series SSD drives.  These take over from the well regarded X25-M SSD drives.  But add more capacity.  Better performance.  And lower cost per GB!

Our new Sandybridge dedicated servers come with SATA3 which helps maximize the 330 series drive performance.  Data sheets show that over SATA 3 (at 6Gb/s) these drives can achieve 450+ MB/s, and ~25k IOPS.

We now offer the larger capacity 120GB and 180GB Intel 330 SSD (Sandforce based) options replacing both the original Intel X25-M 80gb option.

The SSDs are ideal for customers with performance critical IO loads.  Primarily: databases on sites with many concurrent users.  The low latency and very high throughput reduce overall server load.   And let you maximize other resources besides IO (like CPU and bandwidth).  This has the cascade effect of allowing your services to do more work on the same hardware.   Combine with plenty of RAM and our new Sandybridge CPUs and the  SSDs are hard to beat.

The SSDs are available for order on any of our Dallas-based dedicated servers.  Select the model that best suits you at http://rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp?hom=t-ded-dal

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Mysql Master/Master Replication & File sync for quick easy scaling or load balance

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Liz Quilty

A lot of our customers often need a quick easy way to scale up without moving to a new host or changing IP, or even just want an overseas copy of their site, so this is a brief tutorial on how to duplicate your server, and have the database and files replicate between the 2 instances.

First, order your second VPS. This will work between data centers, around the world, or even within the same data center no problems at all. Make sure the disk size is the same size on both VPS. Install the new VPS with a copy of the old one, you can do this in your rimuhosting panel. This step is not overly necessary, but may save you setup/config and initial data transfer.
Continue reading →

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Intel Dual Sandybridge servers avilable

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Glenn Enright

Intel-Sandy-BridgeWe are pleased to announce the immediate availability of powerful new dual processor servers running Intel Sandybridge E5-2620 or E5-2630 CPUs. These impressive machines are built on the popular Supermicro platforms using the X9DR-f motherboard

This new platform will enhance any large scale dedicated or virtualized deployments with access to 24 hyperthreaded cores and support for 128GB RAM or more in a 1U form.

Anandtech have shown about 40% speed boosts over the previous generation E5560 processor for common server loads, up to 70% increases for some computationally intensive tasks.  They say:

Our conclusion about the Xeon E5-2690 2.9 GHz is short and simple: it is the fastest server CPU you can get in a reasonably priced server and it blows the competition and the previous Xeon generation away.

The servers are available for ordering in Dallas at http://rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp?hom=t-ded-dal in the dual CPU section under "2 x 2012 Sandy Bridge Xeon"

You can configure the server with up to 96GB of memory.  There are dual power supply and redundant power options.  Plus our standard option of private networking.

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Keeping your hosting panel updated

Posted on May 5, 2012 by Glenn Enright

From time to time hosting control panels (Such as Plesk) get updated by their creators. Those updates may often include patches to critical vulnerabilities, so its a good idea to keep track of those.

We try to keep our customers informed. One example is a recent notification from Parallels affecting some older versions of Plesk.

However it is a great idea to keep track yourself. We recommend signing up to the relevant announcement channels. Some handy examples are below.

Plesk email anouncements or rss feed

Virtualmin Profesional issue tracker

Webmin email anouncements or Webmin/Usermin community support

If you have questions at any time about enhancing the security of anything to do with your server please do get in touch with us

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Wordcamp New Zealand – Scaling Servers

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Liz Quilty

 On the 22nd of April, I (Liz) was lucky enough to be able to speak on scaling WordPress and servers at the New Zealand WordCamp.

The people there were great, and i ended up meeting and talking to many fascinating people about all sorts of code, servers, set ups among other things.
I was a little nervous that i only had 30 minutes to fit in a lot of information, and i had to dumb it down a fair bit for those with less technical knowledge to make it understandable.
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Run your own kernel with PV-Grub

Posted on April 24, 2012 by John Billings

We have just added PV-Grub capability to our VPS offerings.

PV-Grub lets you run a custom kernel on your server.  Rimuhosting is all about flexibility and PV-Grub is one feature that will give our customers a lot of different options.  Custom modules, latest kernel, old kernel, kernel development, lots of good stuff.

We continue to offer our own kernels.  These run external to the VPS. In these we enable most common options (but occasionally a customer would require an option we had not enabled). And in that case, if the customer lets us know we would often just go build a custom kernel for that customer with the options enabled.

PV-Grub is an option for you if you need to run some particular version of some kernel or module for a particular reason.  Most customers will not need to touch their kernel setup (the externally provided kernels work really well for a lot of people).

With PV-Grub, you are in control of the kernel you use, and can keep that updated as you see fit and load whichever modules you would like to run.

With our provided kernels then we get to do a bit of testing.  To ensure that the servers operate reliably on that particular kernel.  And to enable to us automatically upgrade kernels over time.  For people that do not want to fuss about doing that even if there are security exploits discovered.

To switch to PV-Grub or to find out if it is right for you check:

http://rimuhosting.com/knowledgebase/rimuhosting/pv-grub

For example, you will need to install grub and a kernel.

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WordPress mass update script 3.3.2

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Liz Quilty

This script will search /var/www (changeable in a variable) for any wordpress installs and make sure its upgraded to the latest version.
It will run a backup to /root/wp_upgrade/ of all files and database before doing anything with the site in case of major catastrophe (make sure you have spare disk space if your sites have a lot of uploaded files).

I have now added putting the site into maintenance mode whilst upgrading. This just involves adding a .maintenance in the document root.

It pays to check each site after the upgrade to make sure plugins all worked (and upgrade plugins before the upgrade works also!)

Let me know if you have any bugs at all, or any problems.

Here’s your script to upgrade them all.

wget http://b.ri.mu/files/wordpress-upgrade.sh
bash wordpress-upgrade.sh

MD5
07fb381feaf0d57daeb2b73017d0057d wordpress-upgrade-3.3.2.sh

SHA1
c5318dd294626ccac3873f62c0e03c3882c27d1d wordpress-upgrade-3.3.2.sh

If you find any bugs or problems, just let me know at liz at rimuhosting dot com. I have now renamed the script to wordpress-upgrade.sh for easy future memorability (using symlinks to link to the latest version)

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$100/m off selected dual proc Xeons!

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Peter Bryant

We have a very limited stock of some great dual processor Xeons available.

For a limited time and while stocks last we are offering a $100/m discount on these servers.

  • 2 x Intel Xeon Quad Core 2006 Clovertown or Harpertown CPU 1.6GHz+ (specific model would depend on available stock)
  • Can take 4-24GB of memory.
  • RAID as standard.  The servers can take up to 4 x 2TB disks.
  • We can set it up as a regular dedicated server, or as a virtualization host running one or more virtual servers.
  • Pricing from $199/m (including the discount)

Just mention this blog post in the order comments when you order.  You can order at http://rimuhosting.com/order/serverdetails.jsp?plan=DSRHTXXF1

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The Great T-Shirt Swap – Instructables

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Liz Quilty

Well, we got the first shirts in the door today, thanks to our great friends over at http://instructables.com

Here is a picture of a few of the office staff (not all of them) located in Cambridge wearing them.

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T-shirt swap

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Peter Bryant

There is only one thing cooler than a cool customer.  Its a cool customer with their own website on their tshirt.  We'd love to wear one.  So if you have one we'll swap you one of yours for one of ours (http://blog.rimuhosting.com/2012/02/21/bare-elbows/).

Contact us at support to arrange the exchange!  To get our T-shirt you can order directly at http://www.cafepress.com/rimuhosting and we can give you a hosting credit.  Cafe Press is good because you can order the size and colors and designs you prefer easily.  If you are in NZ then we can post you one from our stock at the office.

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