Hurray, this has been a day I had looked forward to for more than 4 years. Since I started at Our Telekom in 2005, I have made it an open secret that we must offer open source alternatives like Linux and Apache as options for our customers. Even getting MySQL/PHP onto our current webserver was met with cold stares. I persisted, that came quickly because our IT Department tired of hearing me, opted to relocate me from Sales & Marketing to the department, then handed the reigns to our webserver and left me on my own.
I decided at that time that it was not a viable option to make the transition but still persisted and finally with the arrival of 4 new DL380 servers, I am on my way.
Yesterday, our in house tests were finally completed and I am confident that our newest web server is ready to serve public websites. The machine sports 4GB of RAM with a pre-configured Raid 5 array totally 600GB. The Redhat version used is RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.1.
Customers using open source CMS solutions like Drupal, Joomla and WordPress will no doubt enjoy the benefits. They should no longer rely on making exceptions every now and again.
However, the priority now is to migrate all existing Our Telekom websites onto our Linux machines. We will then contact our customers who have had to host on our Windows option for consent. We will move then as the next lot. I will also dedicate one of our new servers to be a Windows option running on Windows Server 2008 with IIS7. The third machine will most probably be another Linux machine but with virtualization enabled. This will host an ABD site which is anticipated to allow for online transactions as its very first customer site. This site will run on an instance of Windows Server 2003.
Much work still remains to be done on the Redhat machine currently configured. Subscriptions to Redhat are still being corrected so that we can run updates and keep the machines in optimum condition. I will also reconfigure the machine to use publicly accessible IP ranges and then they will be good to go.
The most difficult stages were recollecting some dusty concepts from the last time I handled a Redhat machine. That would be 6 years ago and back at university. Things have changed so much but the basic principles of open source are still relevant and it helps to understand these concepts really well.
The installation process was an easy affair, Redhat 5 has evolved into an excellent product. I remember it was a daunting task to select packages and run into difficulties when they needed dependencies that would otherwise have weird, geeky names.
All in all, I am excited that we have reached another quiet milestone where the customer wins again. You can rely on our Windows web hosting alternative or you can wear your “redhat” too.
A good post Lynnold. This post makes me read and understand a bit of what the “workplace” is like. This semester at Uni, we are doing something on databases, PHP scripting (We did ASP.Net last semester) and very little on Web hosting. This post, obviously, is related to what we are learning now, and it inspires when reading it. Now I can’t wait to take up learning web hosting, in full throttle, especially using Red Hat (which is what my Uni is also using to host its web applications). This post is another inspiration that I need… Thanks again Lynnold.