It has now been more than 6 months since my last IPv6 update, so I thought I would post another.

The status of our services are below:

Core Network

Completely IPv6 enabled since February 2008.
Additional IPv6 peering activated in late December 2008.

We’re also in the process of adding a second IPv6 transit provider, which means that our IPv6 connectivity is fully redundant. We estimate that this process will be complete by the end of April 2009.

AussieHQ and Jumba web sites

IPv6 enabled since March 2008.

Authoritative DNS Servers

All 3 authoritative nameservers for AussieHQ shared hosting have had AAAA glue records since August 2008.

The three authoritative nameservers for dedicated hosting will have AAAA glue records created by the end of April 2009.

The two nameservers for Jumba shared hosting will have AAAA glue records created by the end of April 2009.

DNS Resolvers

IPv6 resolvers were deployed in March 2009 to give IPv6 customers on our network the ability to resolve hosts without necessarily requiring IPv4 connectivity.

These resolvers exist in an anycast configuration in both Canberra and Sydney allowing for a theoretical 100% uptime.

These resolvers are:

• resolv1.as24557.net.au / 2405:5000:ff:1::1
• resolv2.as24557.net.au / 2405:5000:ff:2::1

Jumba VPS

All Jumba virtual private servers include IPv6 connectivity by default

Dedicated Servers

IPv6 connectivity available on request.

Shared Hosting

Because we use proprietary control panels for the bulk of our shared hosting, we require vendor support before we can deploy IPv6 support for shared hosting.

We use two primary control panels (Plesk and cPanel):

Parallels originally had IPv6 support listed in their roadmap for Plesk 9. Plesk 9 has been released since the last update but unfortunately does not include IPv6 support. Despite this, daemon software is being updated to include IPv6 support so I don’t think this is too far away.

cPanel does not support IPv6 at all.

Other Services

AussieHQ and Jumba forums are IPv6 enabled.
Our NTP server is IPv6 enabled.
All mirrors are IPv6 enabled.

Tags: IPv6, Work

Nearly one month ago AussieHQ subsidiary Jumba launched Virtual Private Servers.

When you typically think of Virtual Private Servers, you might think of a standard rack mount server running a hypervisor like Xen with 8-16GB of RAM and some large SATA drives.

While these solutions might sound fine, wait until there is a hardware failure of some description. When there is a hardware failure all of the virtual environments that exist on that server will be offline until the failure has been rectified.

This is why we have spent a significant amount of resources building a service offering where such a scenario is not possible.

The AussieHQ and Jumba virtual environments are built on a fully redundant IBM Blade Center cluster running VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.

What this means is that you won’t be subject to lengthy downtime if a component fails. In the unlikely event that a blade completely fails, the only downtime you will experience is the length of time it takes for your environment to boot up on another blade.

In addition to this, VMware VI3 also has a feature known as “VMotion”. If we need to take a blade offline for maintenance, all the environments are seamlessly moved to another blade with no downtime.

The “VMotion” feature is also used in conjunction with another feature called “DRS”. In single box solutions, if a task needs more resources than are available to them at any given time then the task will not be successful. With our clustered environment, that customer can seamlessly and automatically be moved to another blade where those resources are available.

These are just some of the features that differentiate the Jumba product offering from others in the market, however I am pleased to announce one feature:

All environments have native IPv6 connectivity (/64 range) by default.

We’ve done our bit by providing IPv6 connectivity to dedicated environments at an unbeatable cost. While we continue working on rolling out IPv6 to our shared customer base, you can begin deploying IPv6 enabled content and services on your VPS today!

On a related note, as we continue our experimentation, here are some recent facts about www.se.id.au:

• First IPv6 enabled web site on the AussieHQ network
• First site running on our new VMware cluster
• First production site running off a Plesk 9 release server on our network.

Tags: IPv6, Work, VMware

One of the projects I am running at AussieHQ is the deployment of IPv6 within our content network.

It has been a while since I have posted an update and I thought it would be a good idea to do so.

There are several services that are in the process of being IPv6 enabled, and their status is below:

Core Network

Completely IPv6 enabled since February 2008.

AussieHQ Web Site

IPv6 enabled since March 2008.

DNS Servers

All 3 nameservers for AussieHQ shared hosting have AAAA glue records since August 2008.
All 3 nameservers for dedicated hosting will have AAAA glue records by the end of October 2008.
IPv6 resolvers are coming online by the end of October 2008 to allow dedicated server customers to resolve hostnames over IPv6.

Dedicated Servers

We are now able to provide IPv6 assignments to unmanaged dedicated server customers. Managed dedicated server customers are handled the same as shared hosting.

Shared Hosting

Due to limitations within Plesk and cPanel, we are not yet able to provide IPv6 on shared hosting. As soon as IPv6 ready versions of Plesk and/or cPanel are released, we will begin testing in our labs.

Other Services

AussieHQ and Jumba forums are IPv6 enabled.
Our NTP server is IPv6 enabled.
All mirrors (with the exception of kernel.org) are IPv6 enabled.

Tags: IPv6, Work

Adelaide based Internet service provider Internode have now launched Australia’s first nationwide commercial IPv6 service.

Internode’s offering is available natively to Ethernet and BGP customers, and via a Hexago tunnel broker for customers on Layer 2 services such as ADSL.

It’s great to see a company such as Internode taking this initiative to increase IPv6 usage. We’ve had IPv6 BGP transit from Internode since February which works very well.

Details on this service are available at http://ipv6.internode.on.net. The service is available to all customers at no additional charge.

Tags: IPv6

As some of you may know, the AussieHQ data network has been IPv6 enabled for approximately 3 months now.

In that time I have been working on developing a set of procedures for provisioning and managing our IPv6 resources, as well as what exactly is required for both shared and dedicated services to utilise IPv6.

I firmly believe that IPv6 is a classic example of the chicken and the egg dilemma. While IPv6 has been around since the late 1990s, content providers such as AussieHQ have not yet deployed the technology because there haven’t been enough people viewing IPv6 content to justify the effort.

To make matters even worse, ISPs aren’t providing IPv6 enabled connectivity because there are no major content providers out there providing IPv6 content.

As part of our effort to break out of this cycle, we are now slowly rolling out IPv6 across our network. Our main web site is IPv6 enabled, along with several dedicated servers and our Australian PHP mirror at http://au.php.net/

Unfortunately we still have the issue where the various software that we use to manage aspects of our shared hosting environment will only support IPv4. This means that we may be unable to roll out IPv6 to sites on our shared hosting network until the vendor software supports it.

This web site has been IPv6 enabled as a test site to determine what exactly is required to activate the technology on our shared hosting network, as well as provide a test case to evaluate what does and does not work in a shared hosting environment.

I’ll be sure to post more on this as my experiments continue. In the meantime, if you have any questions please contact me.

Tags: Site, IPv6