HT Technology™ - Comming to a Vortech server near you.

[admin]

Vortech, Inc. will be only using Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz with Hyper-Threading Technology™ on the NT side as of this week. We have always used Intel PIII's in shared hosting as we did not see a need for the xeon PIII's CPU's with the "high" price tag only to drive our hosting prices higher.

Now that the P4 Xeon have come up to a 533Mhz FSB we are glad we waited and skipped the 400Mhz FSB start. We will now be using only Xeon 2.4Ghz with Hyper-Threading Technology™ on our new Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 .net systems, as for our FreeBSD/Redhat side we will be using the dual AMD MP platform as FreeBSD can not take advantage of the Hyper-Threading Technology™. We will also no longer be using VA Linux systems / California Digital and will be moving to a custom solution that will work much better for us over time.

As for our older VA Linux systems running the older Intel PIII's, we will be leaving them for now. But as they need it we will be upgrading them to dual Athlon MP 2200's as the AMD platform will still work in these cases. This would give these older systems a huge push in 2 places.
1. Much faster and newer CPU's.
2. Faster BUS speeds up to 266FSB.

We are looking at slowly moving these older systems over even if there is not an issue with them, just to keep it from happening.

At this time we have 4 VA Linux systems ready to replace any of our older systems in the event something fails or does go wrong.
This is 2 systems such as http://californiadigital.com/systems/2400V.shtml ( Non-SCA case ) and 2 systems such as http://www.californiadigital.com/systems/2251.shtml ( SCA case ).

Once we have tested the xeon and amd systems live for some time we will be moving our CP server over to the fastest xeon system on the market at that time. The reason for a xeon platform on our control panel system even though it is unix based is that xeon system can hold 2 to 3 times more ram then any AMD system on the market at this time and the xeon system even with out the hyperthreading is still faster then AMD's.


When we start to move servers from the old PIII platform to the AMD platform you will have notice of about 2 weeks. The down time should be less then 10 mins each as all that should need to be done is move the drives from one system to the next, for the SCA/SCSI systems this move would be even faster less then 5 mins as we only need to pull the drive out and take it to the next system.


This announcement is to give all the users here a heads up of our plans and how things are going on the server side of things and how we plan to progress in the future.

Thank you
Brad
Vortech Inc. Staff

The time, money and effort Matrix puts towards improving their services is mind blowing. It's starting to feel like every week is xmas at Matrix!

Just want you guys to know how much we appreciate everything!

Cheers
Nik

[Brangwyn]

Sounds very sweet Brad

Just my curisosty getting the better of me here, what chipset on the Xeon boards and what mem type/speed ?

I was a bit wrong, read below instead.

[admin]

The boards for webservers are http://tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7505.html

They can hold up to 4GB of ram more then you need for a web server..

For the CP server I plan to use http://tyan.com/products/html/thunderi7501pro.html

As for memory we went for stable https://www.dallasmemory.com/page41....6&SubCatID=580


Servers are also getting 320MB scsi cards and not 160MB so when we do HD upgrades they will also be 320MB.

[Brangwyn]

Shiny new toys to play with eh Brad Nice choice of gear.

[jcrabtree]

do you know or have a Date when you expect to be doing the upgrades?
I am happy to hear that your going with faster Equipment.
also like the sounds of Dual AMD MP 2200+ CPU's
-John

[Vixen]

I think some of the new servers will be going online next week but I can not say for sure. So don't quote me. LoL I do know there are 3 new ones that are being built at this moment.

[admin]

Well we for sure are not going to do them all at once.. The old servers will be upgraded as needed.. I mean if the system is not having any issues no need to really mess with it..

All new systems will be Dual Xeons and AMD's. We should have 3 new systems installed tuesday this week that are xeon and AMD's

[Vixen]

Originally posted by Brangwyn
Shiny new toys to play with eh Brad Nice choice of gear.

Shiny new toys is putting it mildly. I have freakin server parts in my bedroom right now. LoL

[admin]

Hey I got put them together some where..

[Brangwyn]

ROFL ... sounds very much like my living room floor !

[admin]

Well we are also opening a new office on 4/1/03 and no its not april fools joke..

We will also be moving to 24 hour phone support and 24 hour tech support.. I am sure a lot of you will be happy about this one.. I had not made the Announcement about this yet.. But its looks like the new office is all coming together..

[vonbrocklin]

Hot damn, this is good news. I rarely, rarely need your tech support but invetibly when I do it is late at night or on a weekend. As a reseller one level removed from being able to actually fix anything that goes wrong this is a big step forward.

Just what we need, virtual Quad Xeons! Honestly though, I mean NO offense, the xeons are good, but the HT isn't all its hyped up to be, I have 3 dual xeons at work, they are pretty good (have noticed more uptime) but nothing like the ole dual ppro 200 that hasnt been rebooted in over a year (running true unix OS)