Dear customers,
We regularly upgrade our DF1 web server to keep up with the latest technology in a rapidly changing tech world. Also in the future we would like to offer you a secure and up-to-date platform for your websites and the applications running on them!
Key Features – 2020 Server Update
A) Server Platform Software:
- Enterprise operating system CentOS as a basis: In the future, the basis of our web server platform will be CentOS, which is considered a very secure and stable operating system in our field of application, but always considers compatibility with older applications. Also, security updates are offered for a very long period of time.
- Current 64-bit image: The 64-bit operating system used in the future brings advantages compared to the previous 32-bit operating system due to the consistently integrated large addressable memory area. Wider data registers in the processor that can process twice the amount of data per clock cycle and more registers for fast data caching. In the majority of applications, the new image offers significant speed advantages.
- Updating web server applications: A majority of the applications on the web server are updated to new versions to increase security and functionality. In the area of PHP, versions 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 will be available in the future.
- Updating MySQL databases to current version (MariaDB): MariaDB was created by a fork of MySQL over ten years ago. Many Linux distributions have MariaDB built in as a standard. There are no essential differences between MySQL and MariaDB and usually the conversion of individual databases runs smoothly. Details on compatibility are provided by this page. We will probably use MariaDB in version 10.4, but this is still subject to further testing.
- PHP is basically executed within the FastCGI Process Manager (FPM): Until now, PHP was often executed as CGI, which cost quite a lot of main memory and CPU resources (computing time). Also, this was often not as fast in execution. In order to eliminate the disadvantages and also to increase the security further, a patch was developed for the FastCGI which is available in the meantime. The FastCGI Process Manager (PHP-FPM) simultaneously starts several PHP interpreter processes running in the background. They each wait for requests and PHP-FPM receives them when they arrive and distributes them to the PHP interpreters. A change of the configuration is possible during operation. This does not require restarting any interpreter process or the entire web server. PHP-FPM can also handle add-on modules such as eAccelerator or APC.
- Limits for process execution will be set by CPU cores and RAM in the future: It is no longer necessary to set CPU seconds. The cores assigned to the tariff are available and the specified amount of main memory can be used for each call.
- NGINX will be used in combination with Apache as a web server in the future: NGINX is used as a frontend proxy and Apache takes care of the actual delivery of the web pages. This combination offers further possibilities in the future.
(Feature list source: df.eu blog).
B) Server Hardware:
It is expected that we will also completely replace our server hardware at the same time.
When do we start?
The change period is being planned for late fall 2020. You will receive more detailed information at a later date.
Your service team of TBA-Hamburg/Berlin