Doc::2015 Hosting Upgrade

Goal

The goal of the 2015 hosting upgrade is to combine the various CS web hosting options into a single hosting cluster. This will make the hosting environment more consistent, easier to maintain, able to handle more load, and more scalable.

Current Environment

Currently, CS web hosting is split among various virtual servers based on function to provide quasi load balancing.

• webcore.cs.vt.edu
  • Hosts www.cs.vt.edu, admin.cs.vt.edu, and various internal web sites
• research.cs.vt.edu
  • Hosts research related websites
• courses.cs.vt.edu
  • Hosts course related websites
• people.cs.vt.edu
  • Hosts personal websites
• hosting.cs.vt.edu
  • Hosts all other CS websites

Each server is configured similarly, but each functions separately. Many have their own local database server running as well. Each server has it's own local storage used for hosting the pages and needs to be exported separately for user access.

Upgraded Environment

The new environment will consist of a number of load balancers splitting the incoming connections among a number of hosting nodes. All sites will be handled by this one system. This allows spikes in load to be split among the various nodes, and allows for easier expansion. Multiple load balancers are used to split the network load and provide redundancy in case of failure. All hosting nodes will be configured exactly the same and work together. The websites will be stored on our NAS device to allow all nodes to share access. SSL overhead will be handled by the load balancers. A clustered multi-master database server will also run on all the hosting nodes.