Server Maintenance Tonight for 30 Min, Between 23:15-4:15PST

[mrvass]

Hello all!

I suspect that many of you have encountered the forum downtime that we've experienced of late resulting from increased use of server resources after the server and forum software upgrades some weeks ago. We are currently set to substantially upgrade the server's resources in the next few hours to mitigate this forum downtime. Unfortunately, it turns out that this upgrade will require about 30 minutes of downtime.

We could schedule an exact outage time to perform this upgrade with our hosting within the next few days, but due to the frequency and longer than 30 minute duration of downtime we've been experiencing almost daily of late due to insufficient server resources, we are choosing to have our host commit the transfer ASAP in spite of no promise of exact scheduling (besides a promise of "in the next few hours). I apologize for the downtime, and not being able to provide you with an exact outage time, but I feel this is more acceptable than waiting a day or two and risking another forum outage of the same time or longer.

In the meantime, please be mindful of your posts in the next few hours, and perhaps keep a local text backup just in case you attempt to post during the downtime. Again, I apologize for the inconvenience and lack of proper scheduling, but I hope I have your understanding on this immediate response to the Endless Sphere's forum instability.

 

[mrvass]

The server has now been transferred! Thanks for your collective patience!

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Thanks a lot mrvass, all your efforts behind the scenes are very much appreciated!

 

[Jeremy Harris]

I'm afraid to say it looks like something glitched again today, as ES has been down again for the past few hours, more or less since right after post above until a few minutes ago. No error messages this time, just the site refusing to load and timing out after a few minutes.

 

[mrvass]

As it turns out, something went wrong right towards the end of the process on the host's side, and they've escalated the issue to their Engineering department (which is not as responsive as their MST team due to different hours/coverage). The host switched the server back to the old configuration, but until they read my rather panicked/urgent update on their support ticket, they actually forgot to restart it. As you can see now, it's running again. I'd like to mention that our hosting has been responsive and generally excellent in the past, so this is a rather unusual outcome.

Current status: We're back on the old server until the host gets their issues figured out. Next time I don't take the risk of what should be a 30-minute routine migration without advanced scheduling. I'll keep you all posted if anything unplanned with the server occurs in the immediate future via a service update on ebikes.ca (redirecting the endless-sphere.com domain itself will likely take longer to propagate, and extend downtime).

 

[mrvass]

The server has finally been upgraded properly this time by the host, with what seemed like an almost indiscernable downtime! The forum should be considerably more stable from here on out! Thanks for everyone's patience!

 

[Ypedal]

so far it sure seems faster.. status page updated ! .. awsome!

thx guys for all the work on that side of the fence !! 8)