Tag Archive for: EOL

Claire Christmas

End of Life for New Relic ‘Servers’ – What are your options?

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Today (14 Nov 2017) New Relic are making their ‘Alerts’ and ‘Server’ services end of life (EOL). This will impact anyone who used this service to monitor server resources such as CPU, Memory, Disk Space and Disk IO. All existing alert policies will cease from today.

If you rely on these alerts to monitor your servers then hopefully you have a contingency plan in place already but if not below are your options….

If you do nothing

New Relic Servers will go EOL TODAY (14 Nov 2017) and data will stop being collected.  You would no longer be able to monitor your system resources meaning outages that could have otherwise been prevented could sneak up on you. We do not recommend this option.  See below on how to remove the `newrelic-sysmond` daemon.

Upgrade to New Relic Infrastructure

“Infrastructure” is their new paid server monitoring offering. Infrastructure pricing is based on your servers CPU so prices vary and offers added functionality over the legacy New Relic Servers offering.  The maximum price per server per month is $7.20 however the minimum monthly charge is $9.90 so it’s not effective if you’re only looking to monitor your main production system. Most of the new functionality is integration into other products (including their own) so it’s up to you if this additional functionality is useful and worth the cost for your requirements.

Dogsbody Technology Minder

Over the last year we have been developing our own replacement for New Relic Servers using open source solutions. This product has old New Relic Server customers in mind giving all the information needed to run and maintain a Linux server. It also has the monitoring and hooks required to alert the relevant people of issues allowing us to prevent issues before they happen.  This is a paid service but it is included as standard with all our maintenance packages so any customers using New Relic Servers are being upgraded automatically. If you would like further information please do contact us.

Another alternative monitoring solution

There are plenty of other monitoring providers and solutions out there from in-house build your own open source solutions to paid services.  Monitoring your system resources is essential in helping to prevent major outages of your systems. Pick the best one for you and let the service take the hard work out of monitoring your servers.  We have experience with a number of implementations including the TICK stack (Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf, Kapacitor) and Prometheus.

Removing the `newrelic-sysmond` daemon

If you were using New Relic Servers then you are running the `newrelic-sysmond` daemon on your systems.  While New Relic have turned the service off we have confirmed with them that the daemon will keep running using valuable system resources.

We highly recommend that you uninstall the daemon (tidy server tidy mind) following New Relic uninstallation guide.  That way it won’t take much of your system’s resources, and minimal impact is to be expected.

 

Happy Server Monitoring

If you need help, further advise or to discuss our monitoring solutions please do contact us.

Rob Hooper

How will Ubuntu 12.04 end of life affect me?

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On April 2017, Ubuntu 12.04 reaches end of life (EOL).
We recommend that you update to Ubuntu 16.04.

Over time technology and security evolves, new bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date.

Operating systems are key to security, providing the libraries and technologies behind NGINX, Apache and anything else running your application. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies which new releases of software depend on, leading to compatibility issues.

Leaving old Ubuntu 12.04 systems past April 2017 leaves you at risk to:

  • Security vulnerabilities of the system in question
  • Making your network more vulnerable as a whole
  • Software incompatibility
  • Compliance issues (PCI)
  • Poor performance and reliability

Ubuntu End of life dates:

Ubuntu LTS (long term support) operating systems come with a 5 year End Of Life policy. This means that after 5 years it receives no maintenance updates including security updates.

  • Ubuntu 12.04 : April 2017
  • Ubuntu 14.04 : April 2019
  • Ubuntu 16.04 : April 2021

Faster:

Just picking up your files and moving them from Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu 16.04 will speed up your site due to the new software.

  • Apache 2.2 -> Apache 2.4
  • MySQL 5.5 -> MySQL 5.6
  • PHP 5.3 -> PHP 7.0

Are you still using an old operating system?

Want to upgrade?

Not sure if this effects you?

Drop us a line and see what we can do for you!

 

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.

Rob Hooper

How will CentOS 5 end of life affect me?

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On 31st March 2017, CentOS 5 reaches end of life (EOL).
We recommend that you update to CentOS 7.

Over time technology and security evolves, new bugs are fixed and new threats prevented, so in order to maintain a secure infrastructure it is important to keep all software and systems up to date.

Operating systems are key to security, providing the libraries and technologies behind NGINX, Apache and anything else running your application. Old operating systems don’t support the latest technologies which new releases of software depend on, leading to compatibility issues.

Leaving old CentOS 5 systems past March 2017 leaves you at risk to:

  • Security vulnerabilities of the system in question
  • Making your network more vulnerable as a whole
  • Software incompatibility
  • Compliance issues (PCI)
  • Poor performance and reliability

CentOS End of life dates:

  • CentOS 5 : 31st March 2017
  • CentOS 6 : 30th November 2020
  • CentOS 7:  30th June 2024

Faster:

Just picking up your files and moving them from CentOS 5 to CentOS 7 will speed up your site due to the newer software.

  • Apache 2.2.3 -> Apache 2.4.6
  • PHP 5.1 -> PHP 5.4
  • MySQL 5.0 -> MariaDB 5.5

Are you still using an old operating system?

Want to upgrade?

Not sure if this effects you?

Drop us a line and see what we can do for you!

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.

Rob Hooper

PHP 5.5 support will stop on the 10 July 2016

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Quick Public Safety Announcement, PHP 5.5 is end of life (EOL) on the 10 July 2016.

Anything not running PHP version 5.6 or newer exposes your site to significant security vulnerabilities.

We have ensured that all our customers are safe and ready. Unsure if you are affected? Want a hand upgrading? Get in touch!

 

composer-PHP-usage-chart-2016-01

I am a big fan of graphs, Jordi Boggiano has provided this is a great overview of the PHP versions out there in the wild!

We are very happy to see a big drop in PHP 5.3 and 5.4 since they have long passed end of life and a surprisingly quick rise in the brand new PHP 7.0. 🙂

 

Feature image by See1,Do1,Teach1 licensed CC BY 2.0.