Server move 10/10 & 10/11/2009

Just a heads up to everyone that there will be a server move within the next week or two. They are building my new one right now.

The hard drive space has been hitting 87 percent full lately, and it's just time to get fresh components anyway. Bigger, faster, and hopefully BETTER. The RAID 0 SAS 300gb drives should hold us for a while, and the 12gb of main RAM should help a lot.

But of course these things are never painless. I have to figure out the install procedure for the chat again, so that will likely be down for a while for the duration.

I'll try to give you all as much notice as I can, but I'm up against a timeline to try to get this done before the bills are due on the two servers I am going to consolidate into the new one. Yeah, I've got to tighten the belt too these days.

Thanks for the warning!

Thanks for letting us know in advance Rich, I hope it all goes smoothly!

This move may take place in the next couple of days. Had a LOT of problems getting the first one running with the configuration I wanted (I'm going kind of radical with the hard drives!) so they had to switch to a different data center for some reason.

So I'm told it is running at the new data center and they just have a few more things to do before they hand it over to me. Well, more accurately, my server guy.

I'm not sure how much warning I can give you before this site has to go asleep for several hours, but I'll do the best I can. This is a BIG site, so the transfer may take quite a while. In any event, chat will be down for a while, because I need to find my notes on reinstalling it. That reinstall is a real pain in the butt to do. Maybe I'll check to see if they have an upgrade available to streamline that process. Lord knows I've yelped at the developer enough about it.....

If the server checks out OK with my tech, the move may begin as early as 1pm EST on Thursday, 10/08. He's figuring on about 24 hours to move everything from my first server to the new one.

Expect things to be broken afterwards. If things get TOO broken, I may just drive down to the beach and think pleasant retirement thoughts.... Might be time for me to resume drinking. I quit doing that when I stopped playing music, oh, 30 years ago. One of these days a server move is going to go SERIOUSLY wrong on me and lose stuff. It's just a matter of time.

Hopefully this new one will hold out for a while. I counted 16 processors when I checked the server stats a little bit ago. 12gb of RAM, and three 300gb 15K rpm SAS drives. Still, this will probably be obsolete in less than 2 years. Or else the hard drives will be filled up. Traffic is definitely increasing here at a steady pace. Which, of course, is a double edged sword.....

Thank you Rich! I really do hope this goes relatively smoothly for you, I don't know what the members here would do without this site, I know I'd really be lost without it and you don't need the headaches this close to retirement. I must say a day at the beach does sound like a pretty nice idea though, maybe you could do that anyway and just wait for your tech guy to to call and say it's all transferred and running smoothly.............

Good luck! I hope to see you back online by the weekend

Ditto what Sue said, Rich.

Just wanted to add that while I know this is a "sometimes/frequent" headache for you, many of us REALLY do appreciate this site. I know that without this site my love of corns would still be strong, but the ability to SHARE that love with other folks - AROUND THE WORLD is an irreplaceable part of what makes this hobby so enjoyable.

I hope everything goes smoothly and not just selfishly for us, but also for you and YOUR sanity.

AND... even though I HATE having sand everywhere afterwards, a walk on the beach sounds like a GREAT idea.

Hey Rich, take your time. Maybe a forced 3 day vacation for the whole board would be beneficial. Just throwin' that idea out there.

D80

server moves always scare me for the site and my account, because on another board one time they were moving and they lost EVERYTHING. Threads, accounts, etc etc etc.....

Hope all goes through smoothly for us AND for your sanity! Don't want to loose those marbles right before retirement! And yeah, day at the beach sounds great.... Have fun with those servers (and at the beach ) on saturday!

Thanks guys...

I just downloaded the latest MySQL backup files, so they are safe, at least. Yeah, this used to be much more of a headache until I just decided to hire someone to do the server maintenance for me. Definitely money well spent. Plus the guy specializes in server security (he pulled FaunaClassifieds out of the fire during a DDoS attack not that long ago), so that has an added benefit to help fight off the malicious hackers.

I had to get a really kick-ass server because I need to consolidate the two servers into this one. With this retirement thing, I have to be watching the piggy bank a little closer and tightening the belt when I can. If this doesn't work well and I get too much lag for ALL the sites, then I'll have to consider PLAN B and go back to two servers anyway. Hoping that isn't the case, but I learned a long time ago that the world doesn't revolve around my wishes...

Hopefully my server guy will give me enough warning to close the forums before he starts the move. But sometimes he starts the move and then does the forum database transfer as the last step, which helps to keep the sites up an running longer.

So keep your fingers crossed....