Since Voxel hosts some of the web’s most widely read, most highly trafficked websites, we run across (and thrive on) complex, multi-server, multi-stage deployments. This means that we’re continually trying to find the best way to automate releases into these environments. Recently, we were tasked with figuring out the best way to push code updates onto a large web cluster running a popular Ruby on Rails application. Here’s what we did:
Read the rest of this entry >>
Posted in General Posts | No Comments »
September 25th, 2009
posted by Nathan Goulding
Since scaling and hybrid infrastructure are hot topics around here, I thought I’d give you a snapshot of what’s possible when combining VoxCLOUD, hAPI, and post-install scripts; namely, grabbing the latest release of your application from an SVN repository and automatically adding your new server into a load-balanced pool to serve web traffic — in under 4 minutes.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Posted in General Posts | 1 Comment »
(Obligatory preface: For the better part of the last 4 years I’ve spent my days (and nights) installing, configuring, and tweaking servers that power one of the more trafficked political sites on the web. It all started with one Windows box and ended with eight LAMP servers, load balancing, firewalls, database replication, and enough Ethernet cables to circle the earth a few times over. The result: 150 page views per second and 300 Mbps, without breaking too much of a sweat.)
“Our website is getting hit with too much traffic. What do we do now?” CEOs, managers, and tech dudes have all asked this question a thousand times. Being in the business of server hosting, we’re asked this question every day. So, we thought it might be helpful to take you through the lifecycle of scaling a website – from shared hosting, to dedicated hosting, to managed hosting.
It’s easy to argue that shared hosting is the simplest way to get a website up and running. Pricing usually starts under $10, and the setup is fairly straightforward and automated. When a few weeks or months go by with no problems, you become confident that the masters of the Internet have finally made it so that website hosting “just works.” But then you publish a video of your pet poodle wearing tights and dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and your website becomes an internet sensation. Then it crashes, and words like “DoS” and “hack” start getting thrown around. You break out into a cold sweat and find yourself running around like a squirrel in traffic.
Read the rest of this entry >>
Posted in General Posts | 1 Comment »
