A new hosting management system in four months

Ru-Center’s hosting management system had its origins in the 1990s. After almost twenty years of additions and changes, it was beginning to show its age. We designed a new product, connected it to the existing infrastructure and opened the new control panel to its first users in four months. The company could then replace its internal systems gradually, while seeing that modernisation could move much faster than its long-running plans suggested.

Years of history behind every button

A hosting control panel is a substantial product. Customers use it to create websites and mailboxes, configure domains, select PHP versions, manage MySQL and PostgreSQL databases, schedule Cron jobs and handle backups. It also controls virtual servers: CPU and memory allocation, images, starting and stopping, and snapshots. All of this has to make sense to the user, even when different systems and server scripts sit behind each action.

Some of Ru-Center’s new server components were ready, others were still in development, and the old ones continued to serve customers. The web interface needed replacing as a whole. The business needed a modern hosting product while several generations of technology were running underneath it.

Replacing everything on one day was risky: a problem with mail or backups would immediately affect customers. Waiting until every new component was ready could delay the launch for years.

Designing around the customer’s work

With the client and the designers involved, we rethought how services, settings and tasks should connect. The existing system mattered, but its internal structure should not dictate how customers worked. We designed the interface around their needs, then worked out how to connect it to the actual server components.

We built the full web interface, part of the low-level management functionality, and an adapter layer between the new product and the underlying systems. That layer made it possible to launch before the entire infrastructure had been modernised.

Replacing one subsystem at a time

Adapters translate actions in the new panel into commands for the server subsystems, allowing it to work with both old and new code. A customer can manage backups through the new panel while the previous backup system still runs behind it. When the replacement is ready, it connects through an adapter and the customer’s way of working stays the same.

Mail, backups and other subsystems can therefore be replaced as they become ready, without a single high-risk switchover. Customers get the new product before the internal rebuild is complete. The new implementation also required fewer computing resources than the old one.

Four months sounded unlikely

Ru-Center had a strong engineering team and extensive experience, but change moved slowly. Plans for the new interface and internal systems stretched over years. Some engineers were sceptical that an outside team could deliver quickly: they knew how much history was hidden behind each part of the system.

We built working relationships with the internal team and committed to getting the first version into customers’ hands in four months. The first customers started using it within that time. For a team accustomed to much longer schedules, this was hard to imagine until it happened.

The new panel reached its first users in four months, although internal plans had allowed for years.

Management now had a working product to point to when asking the team to change its pace. The infrastructure was still complicated, but a faster launch had proved possible. For some engineers, seeing the new panel in use changed what they thought was achievable. New people joined the team, and the project helped accelerate changes beyond the control panel itself.

Migration was completed as the internal components were replaced. The new system became the main control panel for all hosting customers, and we handed it over in full to Ru-Center’s team for further development.