Annoumncement - Server Upgrade

[Snowman]

As most of you know the Buller has faced a number of hardware and software related issues since the server was setup, with a lot of load issues causing outages in the past month.

We have been performing an extremely intensive audit on the software and hardware of the server, and of all clients sites.

We identified a number of problems, both software and hardware related and several issues caused by accounts which are far to busy for a shared server environment and several with very poorly written code causing load issues.

As some of you may know we arranged to upgrade the server hardware to address these issues and had hoped this would have already taken place.

Unfortunately a delay in delivery of the new hardware has delayed this until this week.

I am now pleased to announce that the server will be upgraded to a Brand New DELL Power Edge Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz server with 2Gb ECC ram and dual SATA drives which will be running in a RAID 1 format.

While most of this techno mumbo jumbo possibly means nothing to a lot of you in basic terms it means the servers CPU capacity will be more than doubled and with brand new hardware the new server will far outperform the current platform.

We will also be converting the server from Red Hat Fedora Core2 to Centos 3.5 which is a far superior release of Linux and is derived directly from The Red Hat Enterprise software platform, which means less bugs and a smoother software base.

This changeover while being a complex process will essentially involve copying all clients sites across to the new hardware from the daily backup, with the accounts recreated. Once this is done the servers IP's will be switched across from the old server to the new server, meaning that there should be no need to re-IP clients sites and resellers name servers, as has been the case in past server moves and upgrades.

The old server left online on a temporary IP for a short time as a precautionary backup.

The upgrade will unfortunately involve downtime; however we plan to keep this to an absolute minimum.

We plan to do the upgrade in an overnight time period so as to cause the least amount of interruption to most clients’ sites.

I will be updating this ticket with specific planned times and further details as we progress thru the process so as to keep everyone in the loop.

I urge anyone that is not currently subscribed to the server announcement forum to do so as to be kept up-to-date.

I thank everyone for their patience in this trying time and look forward to being involved in a far superior, stable service in the future

If you have any concern or questions please feel free to ask.

Regards

Steve

[Snowman]

The server is ready for the migration process to commence. We will be starting the migration of sites at 9pm AEST tonight.

We envisage process will take around 12 hours to complete.

The sites will all be copied across to the new server and then once the move is completed the accounts on the new server will have the IP's transferred from the old server to the new one and re-assigned back onto the accounts.

This should occur tomorrow morning.

There will be some data that will be on the old server, such as email etc which will need to be cleared but i will post details on how to do this once the move is complete.

I would also suggest anyone with a busy forum site or site using mysql such as ecommerce shops etc that you switch your sites off temporarily for maintenance during this time frame so as to not cause any loss of data etc.

If anyone has any questions please let us know.

[Snowman]

Server migration will be commencing in 1 hours time.

There will be no noticeable issues or downtime overnight until we switch the IP's tomorrow morning.

There may be higher than normal loads however.

I will update everyone on the progress as the night progresses...

[Snowman]

The process is now underway :)

[Snowman]

The transfer of data is now about 80% and should be completed by about 11am. We will then be transferring the IP's across to the new server and switching across.

I will post more specific details on what will occur at that time.

[Snowman]

Bit of a delay in completing the transfers due to high traffic on the old server. ETA for completition is now around 1pm

[Snowman]

Ok we are almost ready to proceed with the IP switch.

This is how the process will work:

1st we stop all http and mail services and take the current server offline. A temporary IP address:


will be assigned to the server. Customers can then access their old cpanel's if they need to obtain backups of anything.

Login to cpanel will be at:

http://202.60.64.242:2082 using their cpanel username and password.

You are strongly urged to check your email accounts via webmail to clear out any new mail recieved since 9pm last night if you have not already done so.

Login to webmail will be at:

http://202.60.64.242:2095 with either your cpanel username and password or your specific email address and password.

PLEASE NOTE THAT DATA SUCH AS MYSQL DATABASES, EMAIL ETC THAT HAS ARRIVED OR CHANGED ON YOUR ACCOUNT SINCE 9PM LAST NIGHT MAY NOT BE PRESENT ON THE NEW SERVER

If you think that may be the case i suggest you download a full backup of your site from the old server. We can then install that over the current data on the new server. (of course any new data from the time the server is switched to the time we restore a backup like this would be wiped so be cautious)
We then assign the current IP's to the new server and broadcast them to the network. This will bring the new server online to the public and all customers on the current default IP 202.60.67.111 will have their sites come back online as soon as we bring the new server online.

Customers who have dedicated IP's and resellers IP's will then be assigned progressively to their corresponding accounts and as this is done they will come back online. (while the process is happening some site visitors will see the CPanel No site green screen)

Once all IP's are re-attached to their respective accounts we will be re-installing SSL certificates and making final tweaks and adjustments to the new software.

If you have any queries or problems please open a support ticket at the helpdesk and we will help you as soon as possible.

PLEASE DONT EMAIL US OR PHONE UP OR POST PM'S HERE IN THE FORUMS TO US AS WE WONT RESPOND

I will update everyone when we take the old server off and switch.

[Snowman]

Server will be taken offline at 3pm AEST

I envisage the outage to be around 15 to 30 minutes while the IP's re-route. Sites will then start coming back online from then on.

Please be patient if your site doesnt immediately come backup as we need to do these manually and they can take a bit of time.

I envisage everything should be completely back to normal by 6pm tonight (probably earlier) at which time i will go and collapse in a heap after a 48 hour marathon.

[Snowman]

The datacentre is currently re-routing the IP range to the new server and we should have the server back online shortly.

Once it returns we will then go thru the process of re assigning the IP's to everyones accounts.

[Snowman]

Update:

New server is online and all general hosting customers sites have been re-assigned IP's. Reseller master sites have been re-assigned and reseller clients sites are being re-assigned currently.

[Snowman]

I have about 80% of the IP re-assignment completed and will have the rest finished in the nxt half an hour or so.

Then SSL's will be re-installed along with server addons such as Fantastico etc.

Thanks to everyone for being patient during this complex upgrade :)

Again if you have any problems please drop in a ticklet to the helpdesk and we will help you as soon as we can

[Snowman]

Just fixing an issue with php and mysql affecting some sites so PHP and Mysqlmay be a bit erratic for a few minutes

[Snowman]

PHP MySQL issue is now addressed. Soprry for the delay

[Snowman]

All dns is now uptodate and all IP's have been re-applied to their correct sites.

I will now be doing final adjustments and configuration to the server, such as re-applying the SSL certificates and Fantastico. No further downtime should be needed.

I STRONGLY URGE EVERYONE TO CHECK THE OLD SERVER VIA THE LOGINS LISTED ABOVE TO CLEAR OUT MAIL FROM THE PAST 24 HOURS AND IF NECCESARY TO OBTAIN BACKUPS OF DATABASES ETC IF DATA FROM THE PAST 24 HOURS IS MISSING ON YOUR SITES.

THE OLD SERVER WILL BE LEFT ONLINE FOR A PERIOD OF 1 WEEK AFTER THAT ALL DATA WILL BE LOST.

I thank everyone for their patience while this migration was undertaken.

If anyone has any further issues or queries about their site please drop in a support ticket to the helpdesk.

[Snowman]

A couple of clients have pointed out an error in my earlier post.

Please use the IP http://202.60.64.244 to gain access to the old server.

[Snowman]

Please note the old server will be deactivated this Sunday 25th September.

If you require backups of old data please obtain them before then.

[Snowman]

Just a final reminder to everyone to check that their sites are all workign correctly, and that their dns and nameservers are set right as once the old server is turned off data will no longer be recoverable from it.