server upgrade / festivals.co.uk email users

[eFestivals]

Tomorrow I'll be migrating all of the data that's on one of the efestivals servers to a brand new server.

The server that is being replaced is a few years old, so rather than wait for something to go wrong it seems a good idea to replace it before that happens. The new server is also faster, meaning that the things hosted on this server will run quicker.

There will be a few minutes of downtime associated with this server change, but it should be less than 5 minutes.

One of the things hosted on this server is the email for those people who have festivals.co.uk email addresses. To ensure that no mail is lost during the migration process, incoming mail will be refused by the server from the point I start the data migration. Once the new server is in place, incoming mail will be re-started and any incoming mail waiting to be delivered should arrive over the following four hours as the sending mail servers try to re-deliver the refused mail. No mail should be lost by this procedure.

If you have any queries or problems both before the server replacement or afterwards then please email me at webmaster@efestivals.co.uk (mail to the efestivals.co.uk domain is not effected by this server replacement).

[eFestivals]

Because of a cock-up with the setup of the new server outside of my control, the data migration from the old server to the new server will have to be re-done.

Because I'm not able to re-start the data migration immediately (because the server needs to be properly configured before it's done), incoming mail services for the old server have been re-started in the meantime.

I'll post back here to say when incoming mail to the old server has been disabled again, when I re-start the data migration.

[eFestivals]

Incoming mail to the old server has been disabled again, so that the data can be fully migrated again.

[eFestivals]

that data migration has now completed.

As soon as the new server has been swapped over with the old server, then everything will be back to running as it should be. There may be a delay of up-to 4 hours for any mail to be delivered to the relevant inbox.

I'm currently waiting on the people in the data centre to swap the servers over. I'll post back here to say they've been swapped over when they have been swapped over.

[eFestivals]

The servers are now swapped over, and everything should be working.

If you experience any problems, please let me know by emailing webmaster@efestivals.co.uk

[eFestivals]

There's currently an issue with the spam filter on the new server, meaning that users of festivals.co.uk mail addresses might currently be receiving a lot of spam (dependant on whether spammers have your mail address).

I'm trying my very hardest to get this sorted before the numpties at the data centre who didn't install it as they were instructed to go home for the weekend.