We are pleased to announce that RackNine has completed the following server upgrades:

Migrated from 2x Quad Core to 4x Quad Core Xeon 3.0Ghz on each of our servers:

The benefits of this upgrade are very significant because the new Quad Core processors include two separate dual-core dies, as opposed to our former dual-core where a CPU only included two cores per physical processor in one CPU package.

In our new setup cores 1 and 2 would share a memory cache, as would cores 3 and 4. If core 1 or 2 needs to communicate with 3 or 4, it will be done via the frontside bus.

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Upgraded to 64GB RAM per server

In our computing environment, server memory is one of the most critical server components, and with this latest upgrade our servers achieve their optimal performance. This upgrade will have a very significant impact especially when running multiple memory-intensive applications at the same time.

By upgrading the amount of memory inside our units, we have unleashed their full potential to accomplish the challenges our business faces every day, while making sure that compatibility, longevity, and reliability are preserved.

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Upgraded drives to new 15K SAS for extra read/write speed

Besides the recording technology, drive rotation speed is the most important factor for a drive’s throughput. Faster rotation speed means higher data transfer rates. Combining high rotation speeds with top-notch recording technologies has allowed us to significantly increase the read/write speed in our servers.

Other performance factors will benefit from high rotation speeds, such as seek time. It is important to differentiate between seek time and access time, because only the latter is really relevant for our everyday applications. Access time is the combined latency of the seek time and rotational latency, which applies when the heads have been positioned above the required track, while the required sectors still have to pass by the heads. Therefore, faster spindle speeds have allowed us to achieve decreased rotational latency, with an end result of decreased average access time.

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Upgraded Apache to optimize PHP execution

We have achieved better performance and better resource utilization by upgrading and tuning up the software that runs on our Web servers.

We have given a special attention to the optimization of PHP applications and MySQL databases running under our Apache HTTP Servers, in order to boost the performance of popular Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. Customer Relationship Management software, eCommerce applications, and many other packages that make an extensive use of PHP/MySQL will also benefit from these upgrades.

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All these upgrades represent a major improvement for all the packages our clients have hosted on our servers. If you have any questions or need more information please don't hesitate to contact us.