server changes

[eFestivals]

I've ordered a new server today, which will mean efestivals will be offline for some (hopefully short) periods during the coming weeks as everything is moved across to it. Hopefully any off-line time will be overnight at weekends, but it's dependent on a number of different things.

I'll post dates & times when I know them.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

 

[eFestivals]

I've got the new server and will be setting it up over the next few days.

Hopefully I'll be ready to swap the servers over at the weekend.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

7 hours ago, eFestivals said:

I've got the new server and will be setting it up over the next few days.

Hopefully I'll be ready to swap the servers over at the weekend.

Will keep my fingers crossed for you that all goes smoothly.

[eFestivals]

7 hours ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

Will keep my fingers crossed for you that all goes smoothly.

it's already gone badly - it ran out of disk space

Not all disk space, just on the partition used for migrating from the old server to the new one ... which means the disk partitions have to be rejigged, which the techies failed to do overnight. Ho-hum.

If that hadn't happened I'd be testing the new server right now, ready for deployment. Because of what happened last night its probably delayed the swap-over for a week.

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

2 hours ago, eFestivals said:

it's already gone badly - it ran out of disk space

Not all disk space, just on the partition used for migrating from the old server to the new one ... which means the disk partitions have to be rejigged, which the techies failed to do overnight. Ho-hum.

If that hadn't happened I'd be testing the new server right now, ready for deployment. Because of what happened last night its probably delayed the swap-over for a week.

Do you know, I actually understand what you are talking about. For someone with my IT skills, this is a major achievement.

Anyway, I hope  the second run at it goes well for you.

[eFestivals]

19 minutes ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

Anyway, I hope  the second run at it goes well for you.

it can't go worse. They're scrapping what they've built, and starting again.

(I make sure I get good value for the set-up fee )

[eFestivals]

I now have the new server with the websites set-up on it, and am currently testing that everything works as it should do before I swap it for the old server.

The swap will probably be done one day next week.

[eFestivals]

I'm hoping I might get the servers switched over today, in which case there'll be some downtime (hopefully only about 30 minutes).

I'll post again if/when I know more.

[eFestivals]

The servers will get swapped over within the next few hours.

This means that the forums will have to go off-line for around an hour while back-ups are made and servers swapped around.

Apologies in advance for any inconvenience.

[eFestivals]

whoops, that took longer than hoped for. Something went wrong.

Anyway, it's all sorted now, and apologies for any inconvenience.

[eFestivals]

There's been a number of background issues that might have been affecting people, that have now been resolved.

Hopefully, because no one complained, no one noticed.

Most of everything is now running on the new set-up, although there's still a number of things to do when I have the time.

[eFestivals]

apologies for the various down-times yesterday. A change I tried to make to the system set-up wasn't suitable for the system set-up.

So now it's plan B, although that won't have any system downtime. 

Hopefully all of the changes will be in place in the next 24-48 hours.

[eFestivals]

I've just discovered that many of the programs used to run the main part of the website now have issues because of some updates to system software. 

If you encounter this issue, the only content within the the main body part of the page will be an upper-case or lower-case 'M'.

I've fixed all the instances I can track down easily, but I suspect there might be a few more lurking around.

So if you go to view a page or search result on this website and don't get the sort of output you were expecting to see, please let me know here, with details of the page (and if it was a search, what you were searching for).

Thanks.

[eFestivals]

I think just about everything with the changes is now sorted.

With a bit of luck, you should now be finding the forums a bit speedier.

[eFestivals]

the latest change in a series of lots of changes is swapping efestivals to use https rather than http.

It's more secure, and it means no one can steal your password as you login by intercepting your communication with efestivals.

[eFestivals]

I need to run a database conversion, which is advised to do on a low traffic day. Saturday's are always quietest, so I'll start it very shortly.

Hopefully it won't cause any issues, but it might also cause the forums to be accessible at times so if that happens my apologies in advance.

[eFestivals]

the database conversion has finished successfully.

The indexes now need to be rebuilt which will probably take most of the day. Everything should work OK while that happens.

Edited May 5, 2018 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

just testing whether twitter is embedding again now...

Yes!

 

[eFestivals]

yesterday was the first big test for the new server set-up, and it worked a treat.

Hopefully it'll cope well on Sunday too.