If you seek a web host that manages your servers, look no further than InMotion Hosting’s Managed Hosting Service. Today, we turn our spotlight on the Eastern Pennsylvania Weather Authority (EPAWA) website. The EPAWA website demonstrates the capabilities and reliability of our dedicated hosting solution.
The EPAWA website provides daily forecasts, interactive radar, and analytical models for weather in the eastern portion of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Recent increases in viewership created challenges for them, causing them to turn to InMotion Hosting’s Managed Hosting team. The success of the EPAWA website shows just what a managed hosting solution can do for a company’s website.
The Custom Managed Hosting Solution
Like all of the websites under their management, the Managed Hosting team continually monitors the EPAWA website to keep the server operating optimally. We set up our Elite Class Dedicated Servers so that they experience minimal downtime while providing quality performance for their website.
For EPAWA, we used the following tools to ensure proper website performance:
Varnish Caching
Varnish Cache (also known as caching HTTP reverse proxy) is a web application accelerator designed to optimize HTTP requests. We installed Varnish on the front end of the server to cache the Website contents. It performed exceptionally, typically speeding up delivery with a factor of 300 – 1000x, depending on server architecture. This helped to immediately bring the server‘s load down.
Apache DSO and mod_ruid
Apache DSO (Dynamic Shared Objects) is a PHP handler that speeds up the server using opcode caches. The Apache module mod ruid2 is a suexec module for Apache that causes forked Apache processes to run as a particular user. This allows PHP to run in DSO mode without the typical security problems of running PHP as DSO in an environment shared by multiple users.
Alternative PHP Cache (APC)
The PHP PECL module APC is an Alternative PHP Cache. it allows the interpretation of PHP scripts to cache opcode. The module can cache things like database objects and full page views. PHP code processes faster with APC which leads to better website performance.
Elite Class Server for Website
The website runs on an Elite Class dedicated server. We carefully optimized to the server to provide maximum performance.
- Intel Xeon X3440 @2.53Ghz
- 4-Cores/8-Threads
- RAM: 8GB
- Storage: 500GB 7.2K SATA2
- RAID-1
Managed Dedicated Hosting
With the installation of the server complete, our Managed Hosting technicians and support team can provide EPAWA complete solutions, even when problematic issues such as high traffic requirements or server-side situations occur.
Of course, each server can have different levels of support as per the needs of the customer. Thousands of customers in eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware rely on the information provided by the EPAWA website, and now they can rest assured that their favorite source of weather information will always be available whenever they need it.
How do your customers feel about access to your site? Need a little more peace of mind? Then you, too, should try out and learn more about our Managed Hosting service.
