Indiana University

IU Webmaster

Capacity increased for the Veritas Web servers

The UITS UIS/WebHost group expanded the central web server cluster to three machines on Thursday, February 24th. These web servers currently host www.iu.edu, www.indiana.edu, www.iun.edu, and www.iusb.edu. As result of adding the server, serving capacity is anticipated to increase by 25% to 30%.

In general, the addition of this third server should not cause any changes to be necessary to any Veritas account holder's website. However, a few items of consideration are detailed below. We urge you to refer to this news item up to and beyond the date of the addition, as the information will likely be updated.

Items of Consideration:
  1. Any Veritas website developer who directly references the servers Viator or Lux by either the hostname or IP number

    viator.ucs.indiana.edu/129.79.78.8, or
    lux.ucs.indiana.edu/129.79.78.4

    must alter their code to handle Hyperion

    hyperion.ucs.indiana.edu/129.79.78.1.

    Specifically referring to servers by their hostname or number is *strongly discouraged* as a programming practice.

  2. There has been an ongoing effort with account holders on mysql.iu.edu and mysql-test.iu.edu for them to change their user@host table to *not* refer to specific hosts, but rather to the central mysql.iu.edu/mysql-test.iu.edu subnets as in:

    readonlyuser@129.79.78.%
    root@129.79.78.%
    partialprivuser@129.79.78.%

Since it is possible that a web application activated on Hyperion (the new third server) might attempt a connection to a mysql.iu.edu or mysql-test.iu.edu mysql database, the database must of course allow the connection.

After the third server is in service, its system and web logs will be carefully monitored in real-time by system and web server administrators for any problems.

If necessary, the addition can be reversed within 1 hour. Please report problems to the IU WebMaster or the UITS Support Center so that they can be routed to appropriate personnel.

If you have any questions about this, please contact IU Webmaster.