You regularly write to us to tell us how we’ve progressed with the development of your favourite services or technologies. Today we’re going to try to do a short summary.
Building WEDOS Global
Our global network is now an absolute priority. We need it to run WEDOS Global Protection, which will protect our customers’ sites at the application layer (L7) and our infrastructure at the network (L3) and transport layer (L4).
In March, we introduced you to our plans for the coming months in the article Building WEDOS Global – First infrastructure sites agreed.
Along with arranging individual sites, connectivity, peering, etc., the first HPE Moonshot 1500 server cabinets have already been shipped. Perhaps in each data center where we send servers, they need something different to connect these boxes – “boxes” with 45 physical servers, so we pack it to fit.
We have photographed the first big pack for you.
So how’s it looking so far?
There are 4 sites in operation and in them boxes, which we call “boxes”. Selected customers who had a problem with the attacks are now getting traffic through them.
🇨🇿 Hluboká nad Vltavou – currently dealing with Czech and Slovak traffic.
🇨🇿 Prague – in charge of selected EU traffic
🇦🇹 Vienna – traffic from south-eastern and southern Europe and some traffic from the east
🇳🇱 Amsterdam – Western and Northern Europe and the rest of the world including the USA and some traffic from Russia
In Amsterdam, we arrange direct peering with a number of operators. If everything goes according to plan, it’s a matter of days.
Status of other points:
🇫🇮 Helsinki – installation completed, waiting for internet connection
🇸🇪 Stockholm – installation is complete, waiting for connection to the internet
🇨🇭 Zurich – server installation should be completed by the end of April
🇫🇷 Paris – Moonshot in place, awaiting installation – completion early May
🇵🇱 Warsaw – Moonshot is in place, awaiting installation – completion early May
🇬🇧 London – location agreed, contracts signed – we have to send
🇰🇷 Seoul – location agreed, contracts signed – we have to send
We are also negotiating and arranging about 30 other sites. Some things work, some things don’t. Currently, we are most advanced in our negotiations with providers in India. At the same time we have one test box at Hluboká, which is ready for further strengthening.
As more sites are added and we gradually connect to other operators (ISPs), we will optimize what traffic flows through what. Each HPE Moonshot has 4x 40GE and 8x 10 GE ports with full duplex connectivity, so it can theoretically handle up to 320 Gbps of network traffic. However, our main concern is that we can have a lot of connections to local providers in each location. We will address connectivity through 40 GE and peering through 10 GE. If it’s not enough in a location, we’ll send another “box” there, or easily add another one to a neighboring datacenter (and thus more redundancy).
WEDOS Global Protection
The administration for WEDOS Global Protection is now basically complete. You can take a look into it in this article. My colleagues are already using it and managing customer websites that are under attack.
Strong attacks on the application layer have increased. In March, we dealt more with hacktivists who were exploiting sites that performed attacks via JavaScript on the page. Now we are encountering more professional solutions, where attacks are mostly conducted from VPSs of foreign providers. This is easier to filter and you can also disable these IPs if necessary. No one will miss them.
At the moment, there is no doubt that everyone will need WEDOS Global Protection, just as everyone uses a security package on their computer today. We just have to figure it out and fine-tune it so that everything is completely automatic and the customer doesn’t have to do anything.
As far as the development of WEDOS Global Protection is concerned, the administration is still being worked on. It is necessary to connect it with the main customer administration, so we are dealing more with the backend.
Commercially, we are still counting on a free option for personal use, then a cheap option for businesses and people who need to set up some individual blocking/exceptions, and finally a more expensive option where you can create your own page to show to suspicious traffic.
We currently use the following, but we believe that companies in particular will appreciate having their logo and text there.
As far as WEDOS Global Protection is concerned, we were surprised how many people ask about the possibility of hiding the actual hosting. Yes, WEDOS Global Protection will display the IP address of WEDOS Global everywhere, wherever you have a web host or server. For our part, we won’t tell anyone where you are visiting. WEDOS Global Protection will also provide an additional layer of privacy protection. If someone threatens your hosting provider to shut down your website, with WEDOS Global Protection they will write to us and we don’t have to tell them anything.
Oil cooling
In the last few months, electricity has been making it very expensive to run our servers. Year-on-year, we are paying 5.5 times more. Compared to 2020, it is even 7.5 times as much. We are also trying to speed up the development of oil cooling.
The way we develop is that we have a bespoke bathtub made, then we test it for a few months and write down what works and what could be solved. Then all the knowledge is taken, put together, new ideas are added, and a new tub is made, where it continues.
This year we installed the oil bath version 6.1. This is still a test solution. There’s quite a lot of modifications, so we’ll be checking carefully to make sure everything works. We’ll be taking lots of measurements, analyzing data and fine-tuning the control.
As far as modifications are concerned, it was primarily about optimizing the flow of oil through the servers. We have also gone back from a 3 shell bath solution to a single shell solution. The main piping was recalculated and the valves were reboiled to a higher cross section. Cosmetic things like repositioning the lid handles and design were also addressed.
We are still in the testing phase. Once we finish the longer term test, we’ll know if it’s working as we need it to, or if there’s more tweaking to be done. If you’re inventing something from scratch, it’s a long shot. It’s an evolution. It always takes a long time and it is not good to break it over the knee. Then it would catch up with us in traffic.
WEDOS Cloud, VPS ON
All data from WEDOS Cloud, VPS ON, NoLimit (Extra, LowCost) and WebSite have been migrated to HPE 3 PAR StoreServ Storage 8450 for several months. There were some changes in the network, when we completely switched to Arista switches. The network has been significantly strengthened and modified to make it more resilient.
The completion of these modifications was a prerequisite for the transition of the WEDOS Cloud service from testing to live operation.
The new solution built on the HPE 3 PAR StoreServ Storage 8450 will allow us to provide snapshots to services and increase the maximum disk size. For VPS ON it is currently 480 GB, which is not enough for some customers. Technically, TBs are not a problem either, but we need to discuss with the engineers what effect this will have on backups and possibly snaphosts.
By the way, we take snapshots every 4 hours and have data online on 2 disk arrays at the same time! This is a progress we will describe another time.
The plan is to further increase the connectivity, which we now have enough due to the development at WEDOS Global.
The solution built on the HPE 3 PAR StoreServ Storage 8450 also opens up new backup possibilities. We would like to provide regular automatic backup and operation of multiple disks from multiple racks/locations.
As far as cheap HDDs are concerned, we are looking for the ideal candidate for now. Demand for another cheap, albeit slower, disk is growing.
WEDOS CD
WEDOS CD has been out of the limelight for a long time. We needed developers and engineers elsewhere. It was his turn at last.
On Friday (22.04.2022) a big planned update took place, which solved a number of problems. We then had to make a few more planned stops to fine-tune the details, but the result is worth it.
This update solved, among other things, the problem with uploading very large files (we tested 200 GB files), WebDAV and (non)functioning of the client on some OSes. The latest version of NextCloud is used and everything runs on a server with PHP8. According to the stress tests, everything is several times faster than before.
The WEDOS CD service is built on NextCloud and, once tuned, is not only faster but also more secure 😉
The only thing that still gives us problems is the online document editor.
Everybody likes green A’s
My colleagues have tweaked the encryption so your sites can get green A’s on the SSL test🙂
Currently, TLS 1.3 with “tuned” encryption is available on all NoLimit (Extra), LowCost and WebSite proxies that use our proxy servers. TLS 1.1 and earlier are disabled everywhere.
For those who have disabled proxy servers in the customer administration, only TLS 1.2 is available. Soon, however, all sites with our DNS will be moved under WEDOS Global Protection and TLS 1.3 is already tuned there.
Conclusion
This is just a small part of what is happening here. We work on a lot of projects, but at the same time keeping everything running is a priority, which takes up most of our time. That’s why we are always looking for new colleagues to help us with all this. Try sending us a CV 😉