ES Downtime Scheduled, Thur Aug 6th 12:00 PST

justin_le

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Newer Update The crew is now confident that everything will be smooth sailing for the transfer over tomorrow (Aug 6th) at noon. In an ideal case scenario this would mean the site is inactive for just a couple hours, but I've been told by gammaray to tell everyone to be prepared for up to 8 hours.

Older Update After some considerations we've decided to postpone the migration until nearly next week. There are upgrades to a newer version of database tables that we want to switch to prior to the move, and will need some additional time to properly test and vet this with PHPBB before going live.

Hey everyone, I'm sending this message to let you all know that Neptronix and gammaray have been hard at work preparing for endless-sphere to be hosted by Amazon Web Services rather than the current server provider that we have been using for the past 4 years. You have likely noticed many times that ES would occasionally hang or produce SQL errors or similar as we kept running up against the limits of what our server package could support, and it is hoped that with this move to cloud services we'll have more robust up-time and better ability to scale with increasing size and site activity.

[strike]We're still working to finalize the exact time and date when we schedule this migration[/strike],[strike]We will start the side transfer tomorrow, Friday, at noon Pacific Standard Time, or 3pm Eastern,[/strike]and during this period there will be anywhere from a two to 24 hour period when you may be directed to a static version of ES that will be locked from additional posting, so you'll still be able to browse and read threads but all new activity will have to happen on the new site while the DNS propagation kicks in. Hopefully this won't be too much of an inconvenience.

As soon as the exact date and time of the move are decided one of us will update the subject line here to include that and people can prepare accordingly.
 
If you know the IP address the new ES will be on, and post that here, then when DNS forwarding is the only issue reaching the new forum, the direct IP usage instead of the domain name would let them still reach it. ;)

(for those that have any idea what I'm talking about, anyway :oops: )
 
Might be healthy to have a proper sized outage.
Like me people can become forum addicts and this will be a chance to get a cold brew withdrawal shot.
Go out some get some fresh air and an extra long ebike ride. :mrgreen:
 
amberwolf said:
If you know the IP address the new ES will be on, and post that here, then when DNS forwarding is the only issue reaching the new forum, the direct IP usage instead of the domain name would let them still reach it. ;)

(for those that have any idea what I'm talking about, anyway :oops: )

We could post the new IP address on the old server on the maintenance window. However, users would need to take care that any links to Endless-Sphere.com as they will redirect them to the old server until their DNS refreshes. There could probably be a disclaimer about that.
 
AFAIK it's also possible to edit a local file on a computer to point to a specific IP address for a URL, though I don't remember how anymore.
 
Thank you for alert :!: :!: :!: Its going to be hard but if it is to be better i think we can overcame abstinence :twisted:
 
+1. Google searches seem to return https results from time to time that result in browser reporting a certificate error, this isn't a criticism, but there does seem to be an issue!

opperpanter said:
Good news. Will the https also be "fixed" on this migration?
 
johnamon said:
+1. Google searches seem to return https results from time to time that result in browser reporting a certificate error, this isn't a criticism, but there does seem to be an issue!

opperpanter said:
Good news. Will the https also be "fixed" on this migration?
Exactly the reason. I can help if needed, but it sounds like it's under control. Good job!
 
The usual procedure is to set the DNS TTL to a short value well prior to the migration, and with Amazon purchase a fixed IP number for the new service that can be applied dynamically to whatever servers on Amazon you are using. With a short TTL on the DNS it won't be cached long and the transition can be minutes rather than days/weeks. AFter the transition the DNS TTL should be lengthened to reduce name lookups.
 
amberwolf said:
AFAIK it's also possible to edit a local file on a computer to point to a specific IP address for a URL, though I don't remember how anymore.
Yes you can! You can do so by editing your local hosts file. Here is a link for all OSes: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/27350/beginner-geek-how-to-edit-your-hosts-file/

opperpanter said:
Good news. Will the https also be "fixed" on this migration?
It's currently a self-signed certificate which isn't verified by a trusted CA. It wouldn't be addressed in the initial migration, but in later maintenance windows.

Alan B said:
The usual procedure is to set the DNS TTL to a short value well prior to the migration, and with Amazon purchase a fixed IP number for the new service that can be applied dynamically to whatever servers on Amazon you are using. With a short TTL on the DNS it won't be cached long and the transition can be minutes rather than days/weeks. After the transition the DNS TTL should be lengthened to reduce name lookups.
Yup, will do. Thanks for reminding me to reduce the TTL for the migration.
 
AWS is kinda slow and expensive. Super scalable, though I don't know how important that is for ES.

That said, I do use AWS, and it would be nice to read how you set it up.
 
regmeister said:
AWS is kinda slow and expensive. Super scalable, though I don't know how important that is for ES.

That said, I do use AWS, and it would be nice to read how you set it up.

AWS doesn't have the best value when considering price/performance. From a sysadmin perspective, it's easy to secure, backups/restores are simpler and we want to the flexibility to easily scale as necessary. Our database grows significantly every year and so does our traffic. It isn't very cheap, but it allows to upgrade in small increments rather than large increments as most VPS hosts offer.

You'll hear more about it once we complete the migration.
 
regmeister said:
AWS is kinda slow and expensive. Super scalable, though I don't know how important that is for ES.
That said, I do use AWS, and it would be nice to read how you set it up.

Depends totally on which instance type you go with. Compared to other hosts, you generally get less cpu, but more memory and disk space per buck.
I used to like rackspace a hell of a lot ( hundreds of times easier to deal with ) until i did the math on their costs and the cpu usage for my company.
It's very hard to find the best deal. Kind of like shopping for paper towels at the supermarket. Everyone's got a different spec and price for that spec.. bring a few calculators.
 
justin_le said:
I'm sending this message to let you all know that Neptronix and gammaray have been hard at work preparing for endless-sphere to be hosted by Amazon Web Services rather than the current server provider that we have been using for the past 4 years.
Alan B said:
They are just changing platforms.
I was under impression that the hosting is changing.
 
It's the hosting that's changing.
 
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