Technical insights

Rackmill blog

Hosting insights, server management tips, and updates from Perth, Western Australia.
The grid that burns

You already know a single power feed is a single point of failure. Here is what Western Australia stacks on top of that: a seasonal fire mode that blacked out tens of thousands of Perth customers three times across two summers, and the reason it takes your internet down in the same instant, so you cannot even see the machine you cannot reach.

Tuesday, August 18, 2026
8 min read
Your server has a second computer. Set up iDRAC or IPMI before it ships.

When a server in your own building stops answering, you can walk right up to it and debug the problem. But if it moves into a data centre, physical access becomes inconvenient. The solution: A small computer on your server's motherboard becomes your new remote access. What a BMC does, why an exposed one is dangerous, and what to configure before the machine leaves your office.

Monday, August 10, 2026
8 min read
From Perth, your Sydney server is as slow as Singapore

A server in Perth reaches Sydney and Singapore in almost the same time, about 50 milliseconds for the round trip. Most of that is the speed of light across a fixed distance, and for a business running its daily systems on an interstate server it adds up faster than anyone expects.

Monday, July 20, 2026
9 min read
How come the internet didn't go down when Telstra did?

Australia's largest telco went dark for roughly twelve hours on 8 July, yet the wider internet stayed up. The difference between mobile and fixed line explains why moving your servers to a data centre wouldn't have saved you from this outage, and the one layer where it genuinely would help.

Monday, July 13, 2026
10 min read
Office, cloud, or rack: Deciding between on-prem, VPS, and a data-centre rack

Every colocation article pushes you toward a data-centre rack, and this one is from a company that rents them. But a server has three possible homes, and the rack is the right one less often than the pitch admits. Here is how to choose between the office, a cloud VPS, and a rack, honestly.

Monday, July 6, 2026
9 min read
The island grid: Western Australia's power system is unlike any other, and AI is about to test it

Western Australia's power grid stands alone. No cable to the eastern states, a thousand kilometres of desert to the nearest help, and nothing to fall back on when something goes wrong. Amid proposals for new large AI data centres in WA, will the grid continue to meet the challenge?

Monday, June 29, 2026
12 min read
Rackmill colocation: Bridging the missing middle for your on-prem infrastructure

On-prem office setups don't fit the way big data centres sell space. They quote by the cabinet and leave the networking to you. But a real data centre is still worth moving into. Rackmill colocation is the Goldilocks option, enterprise-grade at single-rack scale.

Tuesday, June 23, 2026
6 min read
IP reputation: Why we care about how you use your VPS

When you get your Rackmill VPS you're not just getting a virtual server. You're becoming part of a shared network infrastructure that includes our APNIC-allocated IP space and the reputation that comes with it.

Tuesday, November 4, 2025
14 min read