IMPORTANT: Forums/LORE/IRC/E-Mail Server Migration

[OneST8]

I'm pleased to announce that our new hardware will arrive sometime today and be installed at the Montreal data center (along with OS, KVM extension, reboot ports and etc) within 24hrs.

The new hardware consists of three new high-end machines for the explicit and dedicated purpose of handling the next three years of the Layonara Studios web presence. Even with the recent RAM upgrade to the current server, the overall load is rather intense and the hardware is constantly under moderate to heavy load due to the sheer amount of services being run on the single box.

One of these new machines will be dedicated as a webserver for both LORE and the Forums, another will be fore the databases and the third will be for IRC, E-Mail and such.

The migration process to this new setup will not be a short one and will most likely take about 2-3 weeks to fully implement, test and roll-out to the general public / Layonara community. During that time, the current site will continue to run as-is and no actual downtime is forseen though we must always keep in mind that Murphy's Law has a tendancy to interject some commentary on that topic.

For the curious, the machine specs are all roughly as follows:

CPU|P4 3.4 Ghz (Dual Core)
RAM|4Gb
Drive|160 Gb SATA
NIC|Gigabit Ethernet

At some point when we're actually switching over to the new hardware there will be a high potential for downtime due to DNS changes and general propagation issues though every effort will be made for this to be as seamless a process as possible. Again, Murphy's Law will most likely apply.

So far, we're looking at the following order of migratory events:

[LIST=1]

• IRC Services
• E-Mail & Webmail
• Database(s)
• LORE
• Forums

Please note that when all is said-and-done, we're intending for all LORE features to resume 100% functionality at that time.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding in this matter.
-OneST8

PS: This thread will be updated with all significant stages and events of notable progress (and/or setbacks as the case my be).

[Nibor21]

OneST8 - does this mean emails to individuals with a Layonara.com email address are likely to get lost?

Should I use alternative addresses if sending mail to these people?

[OneST8]

No emails should be lost at any time and if you're using the IMAP service, all your folders/mail should be perfectly maintained.

We will be making a complete backup of all services before performing any migrations.

[Filatus]

Sweet!

Thank you OneST8.

[Laldiien]

We will be making a complete backup of all services before performing any migrations.

Backups?  You use backups?  Feh.  In my day, we didn't have backups.  We had 8 inch disks we LIKED IT!  If it took more than one disk we PKZipped it were happy to do it.  Jeeze.  You kids these days with your backs ups and your RAID and your UPS's.  Bunch of Nancy boys, if you ask me.

[Faldred]

Backups?  You use backups?  Feh.  In my day, we didn't have backups.  We had 8 inch disks we LIKED IT!  If it took more than one disk we PKZipped it were happy to do it.  Jeeze.  You kids these days with your backs ups and your RAID and your UPS's.  Bunch of Nancy boys, if you ask me.

Back in my day... all we had were ones and zeroes... and the zeroes were actually the letter 'o"... and backups meant punching a second card with the same holes...

[OldBear]

Chuckles  Ah sounds like someone learned perhaps Cobal programming language.  I took a college class in it.  I can still remember key punching all those cards and trying to make sure they were loaded correctly into the reader.  For our younger crowd, this was before apple met more then a fruit.

[Talan Va'lash]

...I count on my fingers...

[OneST8]

As you all can tell, this migration finally happened and I think it turned out rather well. Like orth had mentioned in his downtime announcement posts, there is bound to be some quirks but all-in-all I think we got things running pretty darn smooth even with Murphy's Law waiving it's wand of complications and annoyances.

Enjoy the new hardware folks!

[Harlas Ravelkione]

Nifty! Good job

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Does this mean that LORE functions are up and running again, i.e. characters updating, birds sending, etc.?

[OneST8]

Does this mean that LORE functions are up and running again, i.e. characters updating, birds sending, etc.?

Character updating should be working again but there was a problem with the bic file transfer process and will require a little more time on my part. Not sure when I can get to that. Most likely next weekend.

As for bird sending, parchment folders and etc, I do not believe they are functional at this time. Sorry.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Alright. Is it in the works to bring them back up at some point, though?

[Leanthar]

@Stephen, Probably not. Sorry.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Right... Ah, well. *Heads off to the suggestion forum instead.*