Planned, Sporadic Downtime between 5/26 and 6/3

[danp]

Howdy all,

As many of you noticed the past few months we've had two big downtime incidents related to our current hosting infrastructure and the speed at which we could fix them was fairly unacceptable.

When PAFOA first got big enough to warrant it's own servers we unfortunately didn't have much money to pay for hosting so we ended up with a relatively inexpensive colocation in a data center in Michigan. While overall the setup has served us pretty well, the main problem is that we do not have easy access to the physical machines. This is a huge problem when there are hardware issues and it is something that needs to be fixed sooner than later.

Thankfully, because of your generous support and the advertising revenue we get, we can now afford a bit better hosting so I plan to move us elsewhere.

I am planning to take the entire week of 5/28 off from work so that I have this weekend, all next week, and next weekend to set up the new infrastructure, test it, switch everything over, and keep an eye on it if/when I break something.

With that said, I expect at least 2 major planned downtimes between this weekend and next:

1. The first one will be as I shut the site down to make a backup of the database so that I can test the new hosting infrastructure using a snapshot of our real data.
2. The second one will be a couple days later after I have the new infrastructure tested and working. At that point I will have to shut down the site again, make another backup of the database, transfer it to the new hosting, and flip the switch from the old servers to the new servers.

After that PAOFA will live on the new server setup which should be much, much more maintainable and reliable. The site may be a little slow as I figure out exactly how much server capacity we need in the new environment, so even after we switch over please bear with us while we work out any kinks.

Unfortunately I don't know exactly when or how long these downtimes will be as they need to happen as my schedule allows and are dependent on how smoothly the whole process goes. I will, however, try to make them happen at off-peak hours to the best of my ability.

I apologize to everyone for the inconveniences of these downtimes both planned and unplanned.

Thanks to everyone for your support and I'll try not to screw things up too badly!

[BimmerJon]

GL!!!!!!!!!!!!


(If it doesn't work... see you guys on the other side)

[FormerUser123]

Good luck with the transition, I hope it goes as smoothly as planned.

Are we to infer that you are leasing space in a datacenter in Philly now?

[Justin///M]

Thanks Dan!

Good luck have fun!

Justin

[TheWolff]

Good luck! There are some great hosting facilities in the area, Sunguard in Philly, and DBSI in Trooper/Bethlehem/Norristown. Having local access and remote failover is clutch. Thanks for taking the time, effort, and spending the money to do it properly.

[streaker69]

On sure, everyone complains about PICS downtime and no complaints about this?

Good Luck Dan.

(Beware of the blue wire)

[Shisno]

On sure, everyone complains about PICS downtime and no complaints about this?

Good Luck Dan.

(Beware of the blue wire)

That's what I was thinking. How will I get my gun talk in if this website is down?

[BobFromBucks]

(Beware of the blue wire)

If in doubt, always cut the red wire first.

[mjfletcher]

I apologize to everyone for the inconveniences of these downtimes both planned and unplanned.

Thanks to everyone for your support and I'll try not to screw things up too badly!

Thanks for the heads up, and please do try to not Rotz the server.

[SwampFoxZ71]

Is this how they booted up 'Sky-Net'?