Our biggest holiday present yet: app memory quota increased to 256MB for everyone

Posted on December 15, 2011 by remi

Six months ago we started using much beefier servers for our shared hosting plans. We also started upgrading the hardware on our existing servers. We did that because we wanted to give you as much memory for your apps as possible without overselling the RAM and overloading the servers.

Today we’re happy to announce that our shared hosting plan has been upgraded from 80MB of app memory to 256MB! This applies not only to new customers but to all existing accounts as well. You can also buy an upgrade to 512MB for an extra $7/month*.

Keeping in mind that the memory used by the operating system, the MySql and Postgresql database servers and the frontend web server don’t count towards your app memory usage (unlike on a VPS) it should be plenty for most Django, Rails, PHP and other apps you might want to run.

If your apps outgrow 512MB of memory then you can either spread them across multiple servers or upgrade to one of our managed dedicated servers.

Here is to our biggest holiday present yet!

*The upgrade from 256MB to 512MB is only available on our newer servers (Web300 and over and all servers in Amsterdam) and the following servers: Web4, Web27, Web28, Web70, Web114, Web129, Web174, Web184, Web200 and Web213. This is because the other servers don’t have enough RAM. If you’re on another server and want 512MB of memory you can request a migration from the control panel (Account->Server migration).
Update: The list of servers where you can upgrade to 512MB is now: Web300 and over, Web4, Web27, Web28, Web70, Web114, Web129, Web174, Web182, Web200, Web208, Web209, Web210, Web211, Web213, Web216, Web217, Web218, Web223, Web224, Web225, Web226.

Posted in General | 35 Comments

WordPress 3.3 is here

Posted on December 13, 2011 by daniel

WordPress 3.3 is out now and so is our new one-click installer:

This version of WordPress has many new features and refinements. One of the handiest new features is the drag-and-drop media uploader. Just drag files from your computer onto the target to upload files easily:

The dashboard has also received a considerable refresh. For example, the dashboard’s admin header and admin bar have been combined into a unified toolbar. Feature callouts help introduce new WordPress features (great for novice and expert users alike). WordPress 3.3′s dashboard also reduces the number of clicks for navigation with mouse over fly out menus:

There’s a lot more in this version of WordPress, especially for developers. Check out the video introduction and the WordPress Codex’s comprehensive changelog for all the details. When you’re ready, give the WordPress 3.3 one-click installer a try and join us in the Q&A Community if you have any questions.

Posted in WordPress | Leave a comment

Server Name Indication enabled on all servers

Posted on December 8, 2011 by remi

A few weeks ago we enabled Server Name Indication (SNI) on all of our servers.

SNI allows you to use an SSL certificate for your secure site (https) without having to buy a dedicated IP address.

It works by having the browser send the hostname as part of the initial handshake so the webserver knows which certificate to use even if multiple certificates are used on the same IP address.

Note however that while SNI is supported by most modern browser some older browsers (notably all versions of Internet Explorer on Windows XP) don’t support it. If you choose to use SNI and someone visits your secure site with a browser that doesn’t support SNI they will receive our default certificate and their browser will display a certificate-mismatch warning.

Posted in Server setup | 4 Comments

1h account activation

Posted on December 6, 2011 by remi

We’re pleased to announce that starting today we’re guaranteeing a 1h account activation time for all new signups*. This guarantee also applies to upgrade/downgrade requests from the control panel (except dedicated IP addresses). This will allow you to rapidly scale your apps up or down as you need.

* A small number of payments get flagged for manual fraud checks. In that case the 1h starts once the payment has cleared the checks. If for some reason we cannot activate the account within 1h then the first month is free.

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Fair shared hosting

Posted on November 29, 2011 by remi

Traditional shared hosting has always suffered from the “bad neighbor problem”: your site runs fine until another user on the machine decides to encode 20 video files and all of the sudden your site is very sluggish.

That problem is now history on our centos6 servers thanks to a relatively unknown feature recently added to the linux kernel: cgroups.

cgroups allow admins to define various groups and various rules for which processes should go into which groups. Each group can then be allocated various resources or resource priorities relative to other groups.

Here is how cgroups get rid of the traditional “bad neighbor problem” in shared hosting:

Cgroups

  • Imagine a CPU-intensive script called “cpu-eater”
  • Imagine that user A runs 3 instances of the script (process 1, 2 and 3) and users B and C each run one instance of that script (process 4 and 5)
  • Without cgroups each of these 5 processes gets allocated the same amount of CPU (20% each if all the CPU power is available) which means that user A gets 60% in total and user B and C get 20% each. User A is being a bad neighbor and that’s not fair to users B and C.
  • With cgroups we can configure it so that each user gets their own cgroup and all of a user’s processes go in that user’s cgroup. We then configure it so that all cgroups have the same CPU priority. This means that users A, B and C each get 33.3% of the CPU to run their “cpu-eater” scripts which is fair.

Note that cgroups keep all the CPU power available to processes who want it: if there are only two CPU-intensive processes on the machine they’ll get 50% CPU each. If there is only one CPU-intensive process on the machine it’ll get 100% CPU.

Also, this example mentions CPU usage but cgroups can do the same for disk IOs and network IOs.

We’ve been running cgroups on all of our Centos6 servers for a few months and we’ve seen great results! No longer can a single user affect all other users on the machine.

Posted in Server setup | 3 Comments

New managed dedicated servers available

Posted on November 22, 2011 by remi

We’ve just done a massive upgrade on our dedicated server range. The new specs/prices are:

  • Dedicated 1: $250/mo, Dual-core 2.8Ghz CPU, 4GB of RAM, 2 x 500GB disks in a RAID-1, 2TB of bandwidth
  • Dedicated 2: $350/mo, Quad-core 2.6Ghz CPU, 8GB of RAM, 2 x 500GB disks in a RAID-1, 4TB of bandwidth
  • Dedicated 3: $500/mo, Two Quad-core 2.3Ghz CPUs, 16GB of RAM, 4 x 1TB disks in a RAID-10, 6TB of bandwidth

We’ve also made the following improvements:

  • No more setup fees
  • 1h server activation*
  • Available in both the US and in Europe (Amsterdam)
  • Centos6-64bit on all new servers
  • If you have a shared account with us we can migrate it for you to a dedicated server**

Our managed dedicated servers are perfect if you want the power of our server setup and control panel on your own server without the hassle of setting it up and maintaining it. Here is what you get with our managed dedicated servers:

  • We setup the server just like our shared servers, with Centos6-64bit plus hundreds of our own packages that don’t come with Centos6
  • You have access to our control panel for easy app installation, site configuration, email management etc.
  • We apply frequent security patches for you to keep the server secure at all times
  • We backup your data to remote servers every day
  • We monitor your server availability from multiple points around the globe and handle alerts within minutes
  • Your server runs “bare metal” (no virtualization layer) so you have access to all the server’s power

If you’re interested you can view the configurations and sign-up at http://www.webfaction.com/services/dedicated.
If you’re an existing customer you can order a dedicated server by going to “Account -> Upgrade / Downgrade” in the control panel.

* The 1h activation period starts once your payment has cleared our fraud checks. If for some reason we are unable to provision the server within 1h we will email you immediately and will give you the option to either get a $50 refund as compensation or to cancel the order and get a full immediate refund.

** If your shared account is on a Centos-5-32bit server there may be post-migrations steps which you will have to do yourself. See this page for more information.

Posted in Managed dedicated servers | Leave a comment

New server setup: Centos-6-64bit, MySql-5.5 and Postgresql-9.1

Posted on November 17, 2011 by remi

A few weeks ago we quietly started using a new setup for our new servers based on Centos-6-64bit. Apart from the new Centos version and the new architecture the main difference is that they run the latest MySql and Postgresql versions: MySql-5.5 and Postgresql-9.1.

If you would like to migrate your account to a Centos-6 server you can do so by going to “Account -> Server migration” in the control panel. There you will have the option to either migrate the data yourself (see this page for the procedure) or ask us to do it for you.

Regardless of the migration method that you choose be aware that in many cases you will need to tweak your apps in order for them to work on Centos-6-64bit:

  • Apps that use only a scripting language such as pure-PHP apps (WordPress/Drupal/etc.), pure Python apps, pure Ruby apps etc. usually work without any modification.
  • Anything that is compiled will most likely need to be re-compiled or replaced with Centos-6/64bit versions of the binaries. For instance Django apps will need to have the Apache binary and its modules replaced. See this page for details on how to migrate Django, Rails and Trac apps.
Posted in Server setup | 1 Comment

New email management interface

Posted on October 25, 2011 by remi

We’ve been working hard on making our control panel easier to use and today we’ve released a new email management interface.
The new interface allows you to manage your emails from a single screen, even if you need to create new domains and mailboxes.
You can save your emails to local mailboxes, forward them to other email addresses, set up an autoresponder or send your emails to a script written by you for automated processing.
A video speaks a thousand pictures so here is how you create an email address (including a new domain and mailbox) in a few clicks with the new interface:

As a reminder the control panel isn’t the only way to manage your email addresses. Our API lets you automate the process and if you have tons of email addresses you’ll be thankful for it!

We’d love to hear your feedback or suggestions for improvements so let us know in the comments or using the “Feedback” button in the panel.

Posted in Control panel, Email | 5 Comments

Europe, here we come!

Posted on June 28, 2011 by remi

It took a lot of preparation but I’m happy to announce that we are now offering hosting in Europe (in Amsterdam to be exact). If your websites’ visitors are mostly in Europe then you might want to consider putting your sites on our European servers rather than our American servers.

When you sign up for an account you can now choose between USA or Europe for the server location (note that the Europe location is not available for our managed dedicated servers just yet).

If you’re an existing customer you can also go to Account->Upgrade/downgrade in the panel and order an extra plan in Europe if you want one.

Plans on our European servers are the same price as on our American servers.

If you would like to test the download speed from our European servers you can download a 30MB test file and see for yourself.

Also, as an indication of the overhead difference here is the output of ping from London, UK to one of our servers in Texas (first server) and another one in Amsterdam (second server):

$ ping web207.webfaction.com
[...]
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 153ms, Maximum = 189ms, Average = 163ms

$ ping web208.webfaction.com
[...]
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 52ms, Average = 43ms
Posted in General | 20 Comments

Trac and Git, two new best friends

Posted on May 27, 2011 by remi

Trac is one of the best tools out there to manage your projects. It integrates an issue-tracking system, a wiki, a code browser and the three of them easily link to each other. At WebFaction we use it for all of our projects and we love it.

Trac works hand in hand with the version control system that you use for your code. Until recently our one-click installer only supported Subversion as the version control system for Trac but we’ve just added support for Git.

Bellow is a 3-minute screencast showing how to setup a Trac app with a Git repository in a few clicks. We also have a section about Trac in our documentation and one about Git.

Enjoy!

Posted in Git, Screencast, Trac | 7 Comments