New Shared Hosting Web Server

I am pleased to announce that we have completed configuration of our new shared hosting web server and it is now added into our cluster. H-Sphere is the first major control panel vendor to provide full support for the CentOS 5 platform, so we have decided to set up our new web server on this platform. We are not able to utilize some of the new features of CentOS 5, such as Apache 2.2, because H-Sphere itself depends heavily Apache 1.3, but the core libraries, kernel, and other components are a much more modern base than previous servers and we believe this will provide enhanced performance and stability, and a better overall experience for customers.

The new server is now live and is the default for signups since it is currently empty. In order to balance away load on the other servers, we are accepting volunteers to have their sites transferred to this new server. Please note that there will be a temporary DNS migration period in which some users may still be directed to the old server, and while the site will still work there, any changes made to the files will not be mirrored onto the new server. Database-related changes will not be impacted as these are stored on an independent server.

If you would like to have your account migrated, please feel free to contact our support staff. If you are placed on this server and note anything that is missing or broken, we welcome your feedback to help ensure the server's consistent operation.

If this new server configuration proves to work to our expectations, we may look into the feasibility of upgrading our other servers to the same platform in coming months. All feedback will be considered as we continue to investigate upgrades to our shared hosting infrastructure.

I want to extend a thanks to all our very patient customers for hanging on during the rocky behavior of our other servers as we worked to roll out this new web server. New procedures now in place should allow us to roll out subsequent servers much more rapidly as we move forward.