The forums will be down for approximately 3 hours very early this coming Sunday morning, as we migrate to a new server. The reasons for moving server are a mix of costs (boring) and performance (yay!). The new server's biggest difference is meaningful to forum users: the primary storage is very fast NVMe SSDs, whereas the server we're currently on is backed by decent — but ultimately much worse —spinning rust.
3 hours is conservative, but DNS is involved so it's better to err on the side of caution and give people's resolvers time to catch up. I've run the migration now about a dozen times to test it and get the new backup system in place and it goes super smoothly every time (~5 mins to move the code and data and ~5 mins to rebuild the indices for the search system).
So while the actual heavy lifting is really only 10 mins, there's some pre- and post-migration work to do, and I'll also do some origin server housekeeping and testing, and then ask DNS to update not long after.
As usual these days, visit the Beyond3D Twitter account — https://twitter.com/Beyond3D — for information about the migration as it goes on, and to get updates in case something horrible goes wrong.
For those that care about this kind of infrastructure thing, it's part of a long-running migration I've been doing (the servers run my entire business, not just Beyond3D which is just one part of it) over the last 6 months or so that also encompassed a DNS provider change a few months ago. Oh, and it'll be the first time in Beyond3D's history that the underlying OS isn't Linux. We'll be FreeBSD-based on the new kit, after I've fallen out of love with mainstream Linux in the last few years as a server platform.
Any questions, please just ask. I hope the best part of a week is enough notice. I was originally planning to do it the early morning of the 30th but I've brought it in a week to get it out of the way.
Love you
3 hours is conservative, but DNS is involved so it's better to err on the side of caution and give people's resolvers time to catch up. I've run the migration now about a dozen times to test it and get the new backup system in place and it goes super smoothly every time (~5 mins to move the code and data and ~5 mins to rebuild the indices for the search system).
So while the actual heavy lifting is really only 10 mins, there's some pre- and post-migration work to do, and I'll also do some origin server housekeeping and testing, and then ask DNS to update not long after.
As usual these days, visit the Beyond3D Twitter account — https://twitter.com/Beyond3D — for information about the migration as it goes on, and to get updates in case something horrible goes wrong.
For those that care about this kind of infrastructure thing, it's part of a long-running migration I've been doing (the servers run my entire business, not just Beyond3D which is just one part of it) over the last 6 months or so that also encompassed a DNS provider change a few months ago. Oh, and it'll be the first time in Beyond3D's history that the underlying OS isn't Linux. We'll be FreeBSD-based on the new kit, after I've fallen out of love with mainstream Linux in the last few years as a server platform.
Any questions, please just ask. I hope the best part of a week is enough notice. I was originally planning to do it the early morning of the 30th but I've brought it in a week to get it out of the way.
Love you
