Moving the server - this Saturday

Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195090490|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

As you have probably noticed, Wikidot grows, and so does our server infrastructure that lets you create and develop free wikis. We are quickly reaching limits of our current setup so it is time for the next step.

We are moving to USA, Dallas (TX), so it should be good news for all our users located in Americas. But we will do our best to keep everyone satisfied and I believe our setup in the new datacenter will prove to be more reliable, responsive and scalable. Not only it provides more performance, but also much more redundancy.

We have a very wise migration plan and we will do it this Saturday, 17th November sometime between 8 AM and 10 AM UTC. We will try to minimize the unavailability period to max 15 minutes. This is deep night in USA and morning in Europe. (Try a time converter utility to find the time in your zone). We have already started copying the data and on Saturday we will make the final sync and switchover.

This is the next step in building a robust, reliable, scalable and redundant infrastructure for Wikidot.com. I hope it will serve you well ;-)

BTW: There is only one thing that you have to do. If you have a "custom domain" for your wiki and you are using an A record pointing to the old IP address, you will need to change it to the new one or change to a CNAME record and point to wikidot.com. We will send emails to all admins with such domains tomorrow.

Michal Frackowiak

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

Craig Macomber 1195095072|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Thanks for letting us know what is happening. I'm looking forward to the performance increase.

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

namzezam 1195116757|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

hey,
GOOD TIME
GOOD LUCK
and many of us are now for you there,
so just keep on focusing
and
of course thanks :)

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195118448|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Just a word of explanation: we wanted to do it a bit later and inform you at lest a week in advance. But… I just got an email from our current hosting company that they will be doing partial datacenter relocation (i.e. they pack the servers and move to another location) and our servers would be unavailable on Monday for 9 hours minimum. So… IMHO it is better to make the transition earlier and work continuously ;-)

The only problem will be with the custom domains that will not change their DNS settings for the new IP. We will make a tunnel/redirection so that all the traffic that goes to our old server will be redirected to the new one, but the Monday relocation will affect such domains certainly.

I will put instructions how to upgrade your DNS later today and also email wiki admins whose wikis would be affected!

And, finally, I am very very glad we are changing the hosting company. Guess why ;-)

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

namzezam 1195119797|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

keep on focusing and thanks :) once again

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

pieterh 1195129496|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Good news about the move.

Please make sure you have a roll-back plan in case there is a disaster. :-)

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

pieterh 1195129824|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

I got the email. One thing I want to be clear about - we use custom domains a lot. if we make the DNS change on Friday, and then continue to edit sites, on the new server, will the "final sync" of data on Saturday overwrite our changes, or will it be safe?

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195134311|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Pieter, there is only one active server. What we are doing in simply request forwarding. So if your DNS points to the active server, this is all right. If not, we are forwarding (tunneling) the whole http connection to the active server.

before Saturday: the "old" server is active and gets all the traffic, the "new" on is just a forwarder
on Sunday: the "new" server becomes active and the situation becomes exactly opposite, the "new" server gets all the traffic, the "old" becomes just a forwarder

We have already set up a few domains to 74.86.235.236 and it is working fine. But please wait until Friday with your domains because we will reboot the server a few more times today.

Good luck!
Michal

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195146223|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We have written some instructions for owners of custom domains. All the admins of affected wikis have been notified by email.

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195213069|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

UPDATE

We have successfully synchronized data between the old and new servers. Databases is now synchronized in real-time, file uploads are periodically synchronized too. The servers are prepared for the switch, but there are a few more tests we want to make.

Custom domains

You can now safely set IP addresses for your custom domain to 74.86.235.236. Your wiki should not experience any problems at all. HTTP forwarding between servers works rock-stable now and we are not planning any server reboots.

Uff… it is not that easy when you have tons of gigabytes to migrate smoothly ;-) But we can do it!

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

namzezam 1195225791|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

mmm, the uff, says it all, hey - hope you there get some rest and thanks and still take some more Good Time Good Luck
gggt
gggl
gtgl

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195288850|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

We are ready to migrate within minutes. Expected time off-line: 10 minutes.

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

namzezam 1195298384|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

seem to me as bug due to the migration
this was posted also in http://community.wikidot.com/forum/c-12/bugs-and-problems

the last line in the included page is not shown (seems lost in edit!?) in the including one in addition the line [[include into-iswith]] is not interpreted at all, i believe it is due to the migration to the new server, hope it is minor.
please have a look in the site iswith.

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

michal frackowiak 1195309159|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Fixed: http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-27294/editing-a-page-broken:displays-old-source

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

namzezam 1195312826|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

thanks :) and shine again :)

Re: Moving the server - this Saturday

two*pretty 1197204530|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Help! I suddenly can no longer access my wiki!! It is on a "custom" domain setting.

I'm having withdrawal pangs……………………….:)