IMPORTANT - Upcoming Hardware Upgrade/Replacement

[Snowman]

As some of you may be the Buller server has been struggling a bit with high loads from time to time due to high levels of spam hitting the server.

In order to deal with these high loads we have decided to replace the Airlie server hardware with a higher spec server which will offer double the processing power and extra redundancy.

We are currently preparing the new server, which is a Dual Xeon server and we are currently planning for the transfer which we are proposing to do next week. (date to be specified shortly)

For those of you who are technically minded the details of the new server are:

- Dual Intel Xeon 3.0Ghz (hyperthreaded)
- 2Gb ECC DDR Ram (expandable to 32Gb)
- Dual 80Gb SATA Drives in Raid 1 Array
- 160Gb SATA Drive for cPanel backups

The new server is hyperthreaded which allows the cpu s to run as though there are 4 cpus instead of 2 physical ones, this gives twice the Processing power

The main drives are running in Raid 1 array which means if in the unlikely event that one of the drives suffers a hardware failure the server will continue to run while fauklty drive is replaced. This will also speed up the servers delivery of webpages slightly as well.

We will be also upgrading the operating sysytem to Centos 4.3 which is the latest community enterprise release of Linux.

MySQL will be upgraded to version 5 and PHP will also be upgraded to php 5.1.4

There will be a small amount of downtime while we switch the hardware over but the plan is to copy all the sites across to the new hardware and then switch the dns across. This will mean there is no need to re-assign anyone with new IP's or nameservers, which in turn results in less downtime and hopefully no issues.

The old server will be kept online for a week after the transfer has been done so that the old data will still be available.

I ask that everyone ensure that their sites scripts are uptodate and that you have the latest security patches applied, especially for PHP scripts such as Gallery, osCommerce, Mambo and Joomla.

If anyone has any general queries about the upgrades please post them in this forum or any site specific or private issues, please lodge a ticket at the helpdesk and we will be glad to help.

Regards
Steve

[Snowman]

IMPORTANT UPDATE

The Buller server will be undergoing this upgrade on Monday 7th August commencing at 7pm AEST

There will be some interruptions to services as the transfer progresses and i will update everyone on this as we progress.

The transfer is planned to proceed like this:

1) Make a fresh backup of all sites on the server
2) Transfer those backups to the new server
3) Restore all backups
4) Re-assign the IP's to the accounts on the new server
5) Re-Install all SSL certificates
6) Switch the routing for the IP's from the old hardware to the new hardware

At this point there will be a brief interruption to services while the IP routing is switched over but we dont envisage this to be very long

From the time point where the backups are copied across to the new server thru to when we switch the IP's across all emails etc will be delivered to the old server and will not show up on the new server.

Clients will need to login via webmail to the old server via webmail thru a URL we will provide once the switch has taken place, to allow for all emails from this period to be cleared.

I will provide further details on this once we get to this stage.

Clients and resellers will not need to make any changes to their sites, dns or domains during this upgrade however we do encourage those of you with eCommerce stores or busy forums etc to put their sites into maintenance mode dueing this time

If anyone has any queries please let us know.

[OZeTrade]

Hi steve,

Although the developers at Zencart claim that Zencart v1.2.7 - v1.3.0.2 should be PHP 5 compliant, I have found Zencart doesn't work properly in my local testing environment if I use PHP v5 - particularly for the admin panel.

Admittedly my win32 dev env. is only a lightweight portable (WOS) with the capaicty to switch between PHP v4 & v5, and my sites might run fine in the upgraded production env., but my experience so far has not been good.

I'm running 2 production Zencart stores. One is v1.2.6, the other which I'm currently developing, is v1.3.0.2(current release) . If I find I'm having issues after the upgrade, what options are going to be available to me.

Thanks,
Greg

[Snowman]

Greg

You shouldnt have any issues with it. osCommerce was made compliant in November last year and so far ive only seen one mod that wouldnt work under PHP5 without a complete re-write

All the servers bar Falls Creek and Barossa are running the PHP5/MySQL5 combo and no ones reported an issues, and theres several Zen installs of varying flavours on them, and none have reported any isues

[Snowman]

This is just a quick update to notify everyone that the server move will commence in about 30 minutes time

its expected to take all night with the switch over to the new hardware being done early tomorrow morning

Up until then your sites will still be hoste don the old hardware and emails etc will be delivered to it.

As the sites will be transferring from 7pm onwards some sites, those with dynamic content and emails etc will not be fresh on the new server and you may need to login to the old server tomorrow to obtain these emails delivered overnight and any database data etc.

I will post and email all customers details on how to access the old server tomorrow morning once the switch has been done.

We envisage very little downtime during the process

If anyone has any queries please ask here in the forums or lodge a ticket at the helpdesk and we will be happy to help

[Snowman]

Just a quick update.

The migration is underway but the goign is slow currently because some bored spammer decided to attack one of the sites tonight

I have shut down mailscanner because of this in order to drop the loads to a workable level

Loads will remain high for the next few hours but services should stabilise

[Snowman]

The move is still underway with around 2/3rds of the servers sites copied so far.

We have had a few technical issues overnight which have slowed things down a bit.

At this stage i envisage a switch over to the new hardware will take place shortly before lunchtime today

I will update everyone once we near the completion of the transfer

[Snowman]

Transfers are still being done wiht about 80% completed now

We had hoped to do the switch at lunchtime but obviously we have missed the mark on that and i would envisage a switch at around 4pm today

I will keep everyone posted

[Snowman]

Transfers are 95% complete

We just have a couple of the bigger sites to move which will take a bit longer.

[Snowman]

Ah there are some very stubborn sites that just dont want to move and are taking quite some time to copy across. We only have 6 sites to go but these 6 are proving to be trouble due to their size and complexity

WE need to wait for them to be moved before we can re-ip so im afraid our schedule is now way behind.

What will happen next is we will re-assign nullabors IP's to the new server and to everyones sites and once thats done which wont take too long we will then get the datacentre to do an edit to their router and flush the cache

As we assign the IP's there will be some dns problems on some sites but it wont take us long to assing the IP's

Once the router is flushed all sites will begin resolving on the new server.

At this time i urge everyone to login and check their sites over to ensure that their sites have transferred properly and that everythign is working

We will then switch the IP's of all sites on the old hardware to the IP 202.60.72.251 and the old server will remain online for a week to allow everyone to check their sites out and to clear any email that has been delivered to the accounts that hasnt been cleared today. This period will be from 7pm AEST last night to tonight at the point when the IP swirch is made.

You will be able to access your old cpanel's via

http://202.60.72.251:2082

with your cpanel username and password

The last 24 hours mail if it hasnt been downloaded via POP will be available by logging into Webmail at

http://202.60.72.251:2095

using either the cpanel username and pass for the default email address or the email address and corresponding password for POP accounts

Resellers should they need to can access the old WHM via:

http://202.60.72.251:2086

We will be making a backup of all sites at a time point tonight when the IP switch is made and these backups will be copied across to the new server so we have a snapshot of your site from when the switch is made incase there are any problems

If anyone has any queries or problems please let us know

[Snowman]

Im just doing the reassignment of IPs on the server now it will take about 30 mins at which time all sites should be back to normal

[Snowman]

sorry for the delay everyone but the move is now complete with all sites live on the new server.

If you notice any issues with your site please open a ticket at the helpdesk and we can take a look at the problem

[Snowman]

Just an update everyone

I apologise for the delays we have had a problem getting DNS to resolve

Jon at the datacentre is workign on the issue currently and will be rebooting the server in a couple of minutes

We have identified the cause of the problem and will have the issue resolved as soon as possible

[Snowman]

All services are now up and online and functioning correctly

the issue was caused by the firewall and iptables stopping the named dns service from functionign correctly

This has been rectified

If anyone now has any further problems they will be site specific so please lodge a ticket at the helpdesk and we will get them sorted out

Regards
Steve