Server Migration – Dry As Dust

Server migration – cor!

It’s not sexy, is it?

Talking of cores, the servers have gone from four processor cores to twelve processor cores. For the un-initiated, you might think of a core as being the number of ‘brains’ the server can think with. So that’s a lot of extra brain capacity.

Surely not a cheesy pun about RAM now? Errrrr… no.

But interestingly the total RAM (memory) across all our previous servers was 18Gb. We now have 48Gb of RAM.  That’s almost three times as much.

Add to that increased hard disk speeds, and you can see that your website pages can be delivered to your visitors in double quick time.

It all adds up to something, well… quite exciting really.

What it means right now

Your website(s) is now hosted on a much more powerful server.

That server will give your website visitors and Google (and Bing etc.) a much faster response. Part of how Google ranks pages depends on the response time of the pages it finds. Faster is better.

The graph below from Google’s Webmaster Tools shows a customer site which hosts scripts, video and a game. The average page load speed was around 3.5 seconds before we migrated it to the new server. Now the average page load speed is nearer to 700 milliseconds – well under a second, and often it is closer to 600 milliseconds.

All that extra processing power and website speed –  Intergage will be charging more for this, right? Well no, actually, we have no intentions to increase the subscription.

And whilst subscription prices not being increased might not be something to get excited about, it is at least something to be a little thankful for. That’s a whole lot more ‘bang’ for no more bucks.

What it means for the future

Having these bigger, faster servers means that we have the building blocks for a fail-over solution. So that even if the server that your website lives on should go down, there will be no interruption of service. Your website will be automatically loaded onto a server with spare capacity and will keep working. Our hairy techies are working on this for you right now.

So, faster servers mean faster websites. Faster websites mean happier site visitors and a happier Google. Now whilst I’m not throwing a party this weekend, there is a little spring in my step, knowing that the servers and your websites are in good shape following the server migration.

If you would like any more information about the server migration, please give your Account Manager a call on 0845 456 1022.

(No dust was harmed in the making of this blog post).

Posted February 22nd, 2012