TT web server hardware upgrade, Friday 22.Aug.2008

At 6pm Friday 22.Aug.2008 we're switching the TT website over to a bigger, better, faster machine.

That means there will be some downtime.

The general plan is to disable new posts on the forum, you should still be able to read the archives though.

PMing will not be switched off, but it's possible some PMs sent after 6pm will get lost.

For those interested in the technicalities, we're currently running on a dedicated linux server with 2 x 2.2 GHz CPU and 4 GB RAM.

We'll be moving to a new dedicated server with 8 x 2.1 GHz CPU and 16 GB RAM. That's around 4x increased power.

Although the switchover will only take a few minutes, it takes a few hours for the server's new IP address to propagate throughout the domain name system, hence the downtime.

With luck, the forum should be fully operational again by sometime mid-Saturday. Other parts of the site, however, may take longer to iron out any problems.

We've been testing the new machine the last couple of weeks and it seems to be running well:

Doesn't this belong in German news?

is that your dad, bob?

Oh no i'm devastated, what on earth will I do on a Friday night in this boring country without Toytown..sob sob

where are the valves and the huge resistors and dust and flashing lights and... and...
or ist that the new computer on the right - the machine with the hair?

So, I guess this means I go out and talk to people tonight. wow.

ah, but which TT event will you choose?

More probably his son...

Who said I can only go to TT events

So we'll have a whole new thread to write on tomorrow: "What doesn't work after the upgrade!"

... and we can do a poll... What did you do during the huge blackout?

1. Sat at my desk staring at the monitor and cried
2. Figured getting drunk was an alternative way of getting back into virtual reality
3. Discovered that there's a whole world out there ouside my door
4. Went shopping for groceries & to stock up on munchies in preparation for the Great Return

So all us loosers and morans will need to get a life for a few hours huh?

No, Bob's his uncle.

Time for some good ol' fashioned looting. Might even overturn a few cars.

The hardware in that pic. looks nothing like a server or even a rack of servers. It looks like the face of the devices is covered with fans or gauges. No server I have ever seen covers the entire front/back service with little fans or meters. And if that rack is really full of servers, then there are too few network cables (What I assume those golden cables are).. Looks to be a fake... Try again EB...

PS: And if it is real, then it looks like really old kit, and that datacenter has some major cooling issues if the server racks require that many fans.

Oh dear, that's worrying. Has someone sold him some antiquated junk claiming it's state-of-the-art at a discount price? Or has Editor Bob fallen into a time-warp? I do hope he knows what he's doing.

How can you doubt the Great Leader?

Actually that is EB on the left and the Architect of TT on the right.
There is no spoon

EB are you still transferring over information to this new server? I tried but couldn't access info using the search function.

According to some interesting articles that I have read, certain activities tend to predominate as a substitute during Great Blackouts. I wonder how many TT babies will be born in 9 months?

Following Great Blackouts of TT comes many Great Depressions. At least Bob was kind enough not to do this during working hours

Why don't you move to cluster instead of dedicating one Server and avoid single point of failure.Better put up a loadbalancer and run multiple servers behind.
It is strange that you changing the Servers IP unless you are not changing the provider i don't see a reason to move to different IP.Better get additional IP's from 1und1 and create a VIP which you may register for the domain

Yeah. Or route the warp core into the inertial dampers and the phase transducers...

Its an old mainframe. Probably the comms cabinet.

Anyway. Well done Edbo so far so good!

Yep cos clustering mysql databases is the cheepest easiest thing to do

While we're at it, we'll install an Oracle RAC system as well. simple as pie

good to see your a supporter preet, helping Toytown survive

Poots

(who does large scale commercial webhosting as his full time career - an IP load balancing is shit)

I do..

Setting up a simple 3 server (1xDB 2xweb frontend) setup is fairly easy. It also allows you to expand capacity just by adding another frontend.
With the huge server TT has now, I figure it can handle atleast 4-6 frontends before another DB server is needed. However for redundancy there
should be atleast 2 DB servers. Preff. in 2 different datacenters.


Seeing as MySQL is FREE.. It is.. Ver. 5 even has built-in Replication support.

Oracle is Overkill for the TT DB. Not to mention that using it for a prod. site will cost lots of $$$.
Add to that the fact that IPS doesn't support an Oracle DB.

A single Bigger server is very rarely the answer to a high traffic database intense website..

I'm surprised at ya Poots for those comments, esp. coming from an IT/Web guy..

I'm sure Ed. Bob won't have thought of any of this, wouldn't know where else to turn and is profoundly grateful for your guidance. In fact, preet and Darkknight should probably receive some kind of special award.

I think the clock is about 5-6 minutes off (slow).

My, I thought Darkknight had been everywhere, but obviously he hasn't been to the vintage computer center. That device looks about 40 years old, at a guess a vintage PDP, and probably not even a PDP11.

EB is pulling our legs, well not about the server upgrade, I'm sure that's true, but about the picture.

Hmmm...why does TT need its own server. Why is it not put on a provider's server?

Er...it seems to be running like lightening now. Did I just answer my own question?

And the site still looks so clunky!

Yes, sorry, we all love it this way...

It is the contributions not the presentation (maybe I also answered my own question!)

Nah, this is the real TT server. At least that was what it felt like when I tried to get at a PM on Saturday morning. T'was bounced from pillar to post by DNS and the damned thing wouldn't resolve for once on my mobile's brower. Seems ok now though.

Is there a problem with posting pictures?