Web Server Upgrade Project

Overview

The server machine brother has been providing the official Monash University Web service for people to retrieve information about Monash, and to provide courseware for students. It has also been providing a Caching Proxy Web services for people (especially students) to access the Web outside Monash whilst saving network usage costs and reducing delays.

In order to meet increases in demand, the Caching Proxy Web service is being moved to its own server machine, an AlphaServer 2100 5/250 with 16 GB of high speed cache disk. This new machine should be able to service an order of magnitude more requests than the old machine.

The main Monash Web service is also being moved to a new faster machine, an AlphaServer 1000 4/233. As well as increasing the speed at which Web requests can be answered, this will also enable sorely-needed services that the current server doesn't have the resources to provide. These services include such things as Forms and CGI support, user-requested statistics gathering, a Web server index, and Document upload facilities.

Proposals

Later, because 80% of the requests users were making were Proxy requests, it was decided to host the Proxy service on its own large, fast machine. Another separate, smaller server configuration was chosen to provide all the normal Monash Web services.

Progress so Far

• Machines ordered and delivered, except for 3 cables and the Netscape Proxy Server software and license.
• Machines assembled, configured and brought on-line. The large machine hosting the Proxy service is called warp and the smaller machine hosting the Web services is called weft.
• The FTP archive that used to be on brother (and later domino) has been moved to weft and merged with the old monu1 FTP archive, creating a unified ftp.monash.edu.au FTP service.
• The version of Netscape Navigator for Windows on the Student Novell servers has been changed to use proxy.monash.edu.au as the name of the Proxy service.
• Netscape Navigator for Windows version 1.2N has been added to Softinst. This should encourage people to download the new version, which will configure their PCs to use proxy.monash.edu.au as the name of the Proxy service.
• The new proxy.monash.edu.au Web Proxy service has been setup on warp (using a 60 day Netscape Proxy Server evaluation license). The Cache from the old CERN Proxy server on brother has been merged in, giving a current Cache size of ~1.5 GB. Users are being encouraged to move to using the new Proxy service. The new Proxy service is providing vastly improved performance.
• A http://proxy.monash.edu.au/ Web page has been created to warn people NOT to try and use that machine as a Web Server, and instruct them what they should be doing.
• The new www.monash.edu.au HTTP Web service has been setup on weft using the Netscape Commerce Server (free to Educational Institutions). Experiments have been performed on how various Web services (especially CGI scripts) can be provided from the weft machine without users having login accounts on that machine.
• Scanned all user-written HTML files to check for obsolete references to brother and other obsolete machine names. Advised the relevant authors.
• Cloned the http://www.monash.edu.au/ service from brother to weft. Note that this is NOT accessible as http://weft.cc.monash.edu.au/

Things left to do

• Close down the Proxy service on brother after a suitable warning period, replacing it with a Web page describing how to configure Web browsers to use proxy.monash.edu.au instead.
• Close down the HTTP service on brother after a suitable warning period.
• Port the Gopher and WAIS services from their Ultrix environment on brother to the Digital UNIX environment on weft and migrate them across.
• Re-work the server logfile analysis programs so that they work on the new servers.

Future Plans

• Provide new Web-related services that could not be provided before due to lack of available CPU power. This includes things such as easy to use Forms and CGI facilities for users, user-requested statistics gathering, a Web server index, HTML syntax checking, and better upload facilities.
• Create some more "virtual" Web services on the weft machine, e.g. create some http://www.<dept>.monash.edu.au/ services for various departments that don't want to run their own full Web server machine initially, and allow them to migrate to a different (faculty or departmental) machine later.
• Run a pilot project to investigate ways of providing a hierarchical or distributed Web Caching service. This would involve at least 2 additional Alpha server machines and could look at options such as:
  • Hierarchical versus distributed caches, and/or
  • Different caching programs and their tuning options, and/or
  • Servers at well-connected campuses, and/or
  • Servers at not-well-connected campuses, and/or
  • Modifications to browser configurations on PC fileservers based on where the user is currently located as distinct from where their home fileserver is, and/or
  • Modification to BOOTP or DNS servers to return different answers depending on where the user is.