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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →“GitHub is Moving to Rackspace!” was a September 2009 announcement about a completed historical migration—not a current hosting change. GitHub said it was moving from Engine Yard to Rackspace to address stability and performance problems and gain more control over infrastructure. The company scheduled the final move for September 27, 2009, and confirmed in an October follow-up that it had happened.
Why GitHub changed hosting providers
In its September 15, 2009 announcement, GitHub said it was experiencing stability and performance issues and wanted to improve customers’ experience. At the time, the company reported adding “over 400 new users and 1000 new repositories every day.” That is a description of its growth in 2009, not a current rate.
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GitHub said it assessed providers on price, flexibility, capacity, control, globalization, cloud capability, and trust. It concluded Rackspace met or exceeded its requirements and offered traditional hosting as well as cloud services. The arrangement included discounted hardware, but GitHub emphasized that it would remain a paying customer.
Co-founder Tom Preston-Werner summed up the stated purpose: “The single most important reason we’re undertaking this effort is so that we can give you, our customer, a better experience on GitHub.”
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What changed in the announced infrastructure
GitHub contrasted its existing Engine Yard setup with the Rackspace configuration it planned to deploy. The figures below are company-reported in the 2009 announcement; they describe that migration, not present-day hosting specifications.
| Configuration | Machines | Processing capacity | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engine Yard setup | 10 VMs | 39 VCPUs | 54GB RAM |
| Planned Rackspace setup | 16 physical machines | 128 physical cores | 288GB RAM |
GitHub noted that the Engine Yard totals excluded database and CORAID resources outside GitHub’s control. The comparison therefore reflects the resource counts the company reported, not a like-for-like independent performance test. GitHub’s reasoning was specific to its needs at the time: the Rackspace plan provided more stated capacity and greater control over configurable hardware. It is not evidence that physical servers are always preferable to virtualized or cloud hosting.
How the planned repository storage was designed to scale
GitHub said its shared file system had exceeded normal I/O tolerances and had kept the company from adding hardware for nearly a year. Its proposed replacement was a federated backend intended to let storage grow without requiring the front end and storage layer to scale as one unit.
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- Repositories would be stored on commodity file servers.
- The file servers would expose an RPC interface.
- A routing table would direct requests to the relevant storage machines.
- GitHub could add storage capacity by adding machines, while scaling frontend and backend systems independently.
The announcement also described failover across infrastructure roles, including database and web servers, GitHub Pages, gem servers, archive downloads, job runners, and file servers. These were design goals and plans described in 2009, not a specification of GitHub’s current architecture.
When the move happened and what users were told
On September 22, 2009, GitHub posted a migration update scheduling the final move for Sunday, September 27 at 5 p.m. Pacific. If the move went as planned, GitHub aimed to keep website access and pushes unavailable for less than an hour. Public and private clone, fetch, and pull operations were expected to continue during the migration.
GitHub Pages users whose domains used IP-based A records were told to update DNS after the move to the new IP address, 207.97.227.245. The update said subdomains using CNAME records should update automatically. Those details were instructions for the 2009 migration only; they are not current DNS guidance.
An October 20, 2009 follow-up said things had settled down after the move, confirming the migration had taken place.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the headline means now
The headline refers to GitHub’s 2009 move from Engine Yard to Rackspace. It does not announce a present-day migration. The sources documenting this event explain the original rationale and planned infrastructure, but they do not establish GitHub’s current hosting arrangements or Rackspace’s current availability to GitHub.
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