Four more web servers have been put into production, bringing the total number of new web servers to five. This is a departure of the monolithic “one server for all content” model that is used on the old servers.
The first which was deployed last month is the new home for its.vanderbilt.edu, and has been running smoothly without incident. The time to render a page has been reduced approximately 40%.
The second new server will be the new home for all of the non-www virtual hosts that now reside on web-srv1. I’ve staged the content from all of these servers, and they are ready for end user testing by the content owners. Several of the virtual hosts are currently being tested. The Literature and Genetics website was a direct transplant. The move for VEHS is scheduled for Dec 1st.
The blog server is now receiving attention. The entire App Hosting team now has an individual blog, and a couple of VU organizations have requested services.
The fourth server to go into production is for the student organizations. As with the other servers, several customers are in the process of migrating their sites. The paintball club has moved their site over and has begun testing.
The new WWW server is also online as www-new.vanderbilt.edu. As sites are migrated from web-srv1 to this new server, RewriteRules will be created to proxy the content through. The original content on web-srv1 will be archived and moved out of the way. Gill Murrey with the Office of the Dean of Students has migrated over one site and has begun testing.
The content separation will give the App Hosting team more flexibility in accommodating customer requests. The student groups are traditionally more likely to request additional features and utilities, and this content model will definitely reduce our testing time against the various content sources.
I had a rather productive extended weekend. I managed to stage most of the content from the virtual hosts on web-srv1 over on the new servers. Once the user accounts and test DNS entries are created, the sites will be ready for testing. I’ve tested a few of the sites as I was moving them over (www-test.vudm.org), and they look like they could go into production with just a few minor tweaks. I should have the remaining virtual hosts staged shortly.
I bought Paul Keller’s Six Sigma Demystified last week, and I managed to get through the first seven chapters. I chose this book because it included a comparison with TQM methodologies that I’m familiar with. Six Sigma is more defined and structured than TQM, and the toolbox is pretty big.
I also managed to help the kids finish building their doghouse and swap the tires from the hobby car over to the daily driver.
Since the initial rollout of the blog server for testing, I’ve received several requests for more information. On Tuesday afternoon, I answered questions at a meeting of student IT leaders, and I’ll be doing the same at the Web Spiders meeting this Friday. It’s interesting to hear how people are planning to integrate RSS into their web presence.
I’ve created an AppHosting category to pull together quick reports in the AppHosting Planet.
I’ve added a few themes to my repository that I think are generic enough to be used as default selections for the blog service. I’ve also setup a quick “planet” to aggregate the ITS feeds. It’s not very exciting looking, but it’s functional. I’ve also sent out invitation to the rest of the group for volunteers.
A few things on my open items list: a good index page, a good base for default themes, a signup tool for partner support.
Another experiment with the WP features. This time an image.
Of course I had to work Volvos into this in some form or fashion. I’ve been getting hints that I can buy another car. This one is up for sale locally, and it’s the same year as my hobby car. It rougher in some places, but better than others.
Ok, so I’m off the front porch and wondering around Blogland (Blogville? Blogosphere?) and I’m experimenting with the various functions with this fine collection of PHP snippets. I’ve wandered across a few quirks- not sure if there related to my browser config yet. Otherwise still travelling…
In true /. style, this is my first post on my shiny new blog.
