Site will be offline on Wednesday evening, Jan 19!

[beardie]

Hey all,

No... I am not yet ready to perform the upgrade to the new server. However, our current hosting provider is upgrading their own data center. This won't mean anything significant for us, except that they need to physically move our server from the current data center to the new one. They plan to shutdown the server around 5 PM CST (central) on Wednesday, January 19. They estimate that it will take a few hours to load, move, and re-rack the server in the new location, so it may be offline all night.

Please plan your evenings accordingly. I know some of you will be lost without the site for your evening ritual. hehehe. But we will be back online shortly after. I am planning a major backup before then to ensure we still have our data in the event our server falls off the back of the truck or doesn't want to reboot for some reason. If that DOES happen, we will obviously be offline for more than a few hours while I effectively rebuild the server base software installation from scratch and restore our data. So, cross your fingers!

 

[Drache613]

Hello Alex,

NO! You can't do this to us!
Thanks for the warning!
This is a lot of work, so it will probably be offline for awhile!


Tracie

 

[changilass]

OMG what am I going to do?

This is now the first site I look at after turning my laptop on and I return to it numerous times in a day.

If I have to do housework, or if I crack up, then I will hold them totally responsible.


Hope all goes well and we get our site back in the same condition it is now.

 

[Goonie]

Oh shoot, I thought this was the infamous server overhaul warning.
Well, I guess we'll manage, somehow, maybe . . . maybe not.
Good luck with the server move.

 

[Twobeardieguy]

I am going to have withdraw withdraw withdraw :wink:

 

[beardie parents]

I don't like the idea that I will not be able to keep up with my addiction to this site, but I do appreciate the warning and I'm glad I saw this before hand.

 

[Drache613]

Hello Alex,

Look at all of the poor people you are going to be tormenting & causing mental illness to occur! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! :laughhard:

You had better be hiding out for a little while...

Tracie

 

[Lisafosc]

Grrr I fear we may all need councelling afterwards, what will we do! Cichlid fish forum for me ha ha ha! Thanks for the warning n thanks to u guys for all ur hard work x

 

[jeritta]

Alex,
You do know this is going to cause major withdrawal symptoms At least my husband will have me in the car on the way to my birthday destination so
that should take my mind off the fact that I can't be on my favorite site At least by the time we get there it will be back online so I should be okay
thanks for the notice.

 

[jodyberry]

Just curious - what's the approximate size of a site like this? 1GB, 10GB, 100GB?

Thanks...

 

[beardie]

I'm not actually sure how large the database actually is now. Definitely several GB. I think even the compressed backups are multiple GB. Disk storage space really isn't much of an issue. The bigger issue is the number of records in the database tables. I've also been contemplating a purging of old topics (more than 2 years or so), just to keep things running smoothly. I tried doing an "Archive copy of the database (which is available), but found that that has become a bit of a maintenance mess, as it's a completely separate install of the forums. I may retain the original archives, and just purge the stuff after that point as topics are idle for a year or two.

But our current main issue with load for the server has to do with the web requests. Each request takes a web process. Each web process takes a small amount of memory and holds it for a certain period of time (sometimes less than a second, sometimes for multiple seconds). But with many people making requests, those add up. I've set a maximum limit, which causes new requests to just "wait". But that's better than the server running out of memory (which makes it VERY painful for everyone and possibly locking up the system). When we eventually upgrade (next month or two), we'll have a bunch more memory, so we'll be able to serve more people at the same time. I'm sure the next bottle neck will show at that point (probably database size).

-Alex

 

[jodyberry]

Wow! Sounds a lot more complicated than just uploading a website!!


Thanks for the info.


Good luck!

 

[beardie]

Yeah. I manage the server entirely. We used to run on a hosted environment, which was a little simpler. Before that I actually started the site with a server out of my house. At least now, I don't have to worry about the hardware. heh. But when I order the dedicated server, I tell the hosting company to give me a minimal bare bones install of CentOS Linux (very similar to the professional Red Hat Linux). This lets me control everything that gets installed so we don't have much else running that we don't need (and thus taking memory and space). And I install each software package needed... email (which is actually a collection of about 4-5 different programs, as well as a number of custom scripts I built over the years), web server (fairly easy to setup), database server, DNS server (what tells people what IP address beardeddragon.org is, how to deliver email, etc.), etc. And when they're ready, I load up all the data (web files, images, forum web application, the database data, email [I also run my personal email from the server], etc.) ... and then hopefully all works!

I'm hoping this next upgrade will be easier than the last, since my hope is to install mostly all the same software... but I'm sure some newer versions will have their own quirks to deal with. This is why it can easily take a month of time to install and setup, so that it's all just right before the final "switch over".

Fortunately, tomorrow is not that full migration of server and setup. That's just a physical move. But in the next month or so, I will be upgrading the physical server and going through all that again (we do it about every 2-3 years).

 

[Lisafosc]

geeze! Goodluck, and thanks for all your work!

 

[daddyburgi]

Great job keeping everyone informed. I wonder however if there is going to be a landing page or something letting people who come here that the site is down for maintenance or if it will just lead them to nowhere. I mean like the people who are coming here for the first time or did not see your message.

I am also surprised they do not have something else in pace for this situation. I mean some way to keep the site up even during the move. Such as moving the site to "server 2" while they move "server 1" and then once "server 1" is moved they move the site to it while they move "server 2". Seems like a more logical thing to do in my opinion.

But anyways, thanks for the heads up and I think I will have to make sure to stop by here during that time to see if there is a landing page or something.