[dba-Tech] Webserver upgrade

[Jim Lawrence]

Last night we went out at 12:00AM and watched the Perseid meteorite shower. What a show.

Here is earth we started a new webserver, Arthur the III. (It was named after the kid's favourite cat named Arthur...in case you are wondering.) 

The first Arthur webserver (1998) was a Pentium 200, with 72MB RAM, three drives, 3.8GB, 6.2GB and 39GB and ran Debian Linux 1.1
It ran Apache web server, SSH server... (Cost nothing as it was built from spare parts.)

The second Arthur webserver (2006) was ASUS, 32bit, with 2GB RAM, two drives, 500GB IDE and a 250GB external IDE drive and is running Debian Linux 3.2. It runs Apache web server, SSH server, XEN virtual drive servers... (refurbished from old Animation server...had three drives but two failed...) 

The third Arthur webserver (2016) is Lenevo, thinkcentre, 64bit, full hardware virtualization, 8GB RAM, with slots for another 8 GB, i7 dual core, 3.87MHz, a 1xTB harddrive plus external IDE drives and will be running Ubuntu 16.04. It will run Apache web server, SSH server, OpenVPN (SSL server), Docker containers, Slack server/client, Wordpress, Nodejs, MariaDB and a bunch of other toys...May get an SSD at one point probably not necessary on this webserver as I am not doing any major database work. (Cost $250...via an expired lease.)

The preparation of Arthur the III should be a great learning experience. Initial assembly will be done on a couple of Github accounts. Virtual testing will be done off site via a Cloud based droplet using Vagrant to run up test sites. Each web site group will be installed in a isolated Docker container. The server will be kept fresh using Ansible to automatically build all applications, policies, configuration files and dependencies (the server could hard crash as all it would take is the core OS to be run up, an internet connections and the whole server and all related systems will be completely re-installed...this is not an image restore but a totally new installation.) Will also be using Slack for full communications; runs on all protocols, fully programmable messaging services across any network or internet clients or groups of clients. The best way I can describe it is, Slack is to Blat as an Exchange server is to Outlook. Aside: Would love to get a pair of the famous Slack socks. :-)

Should have the new system up and running in a few days. The challenge will be to get the new server up, running and swap over all the addresses and ports without experiencing any noticeable downtime. 

Jim