Server Outage

Fuzz · 07-26-2007, 12:45 PM

Well, it appears that our dedicated server is being moved! We are moving to Tampa, Florida and there will be some outage during the transition. I pasted the exact message I got from our host describing the situation. Sorry for the inconvenience. I thought I'd let you guys know in case you were trying to hit the site up around then.

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The 12-15 hour outage will take place beginning this Friday July 27th at 8 PM EDT. The outage time will be incremental for customers. Therefore, if your server is taken off line at 8 PM EDT, you should expect your server to be back on line between 8 AM and 11 AM on Saturday July 28th. The estimated completion of the project is July 28th at 7 PM EDT. If your server is still not responding at this time, please call technical support at 888.***.5522.

If you would like to ensure the most graceful shut down of your server, you may log into your server before 8 PM on July 27th and perform a shut down.

We have planned to take every precaution to protect the hardware during this relocation but please ensure that all of your data on your dedicated server is backed up before the relocation begins. Should we need to replace any hardware on the servers, you will be responsible for loading your data onto the new hardware.

We look forward to serving your dedicated needs from Tampa, Florida and apologize that this relocation has resulted in an outage. As always, please contact technical support with any questions at 888.***.5522

Sincerely,

Hostway Dedicated Support Team

LocoColt04 · 07-26-2007, 04:55 PM

I'd suggest doing that shut-down they recommended... that way there's no chance of data being lost by anyone attempting to post during the moving process.

Bleachfangirl · 07-26-2007, 05:34 PM

How do you do a shut down? If I just don't post anything or log on during that time, do I have to bother with it?

LocoColt04 · 07-26-2007, 05:47 PM

When we shut down the site, no one can access the website or its forums during that time period. You literally won't be able to use the website even if you tried, so it isn't really anything that affects you directly. Just know that for a few hours tomorrow, the site will be inaccessible, so don't worry about it.

chaosweapon · 07-26-2007, 10:49 PM

Will my site be affected? If yes could you backup my topsites and polls databases?

Mistress Sheena · 07-26-2007, 10:50 PM

Hm.. I'm also wondering if mine will, but I"m not exactly sure. I remember when TFF was down once, my site was completely fine. I'm hosted at TFF, but maybe it's a DNS thing, who knows. o_O;

Only Fuzz knows. XD

Merlin · 07-28-2007, 09:26 PM

Um... why wasn't this a Global Announcement? Either that or an email... something. The only people who read this forum is mods for the most part.

What poor customer service we have nowadays... tsk tsk tsk...

Mistress Sheena · 07-28-2007, 09:32 PM

Nobody reads the Global Announcements though, so what's the point? >.>;

LocoColt04 · 07-28-2007, 09:33 PM

I kind of expected Fuzz to put one up... but no one reads the Global Announcements anyway, so it probably wouldn't have made much difference.

I should have done a mass-email, but I chose to sleep instead. >_>

Merlin · 07-28-2007, 10:12 PM

Nobody reads the instruction manual... so why include it? Duh da duh! Even if one person reads it, thats one less pissed off person, and that my friends is such an easy fix..

TIP: You can make the global announcement a modal popup which forces them to read it whenever they log into the site. A giant box with bright-orange, bolded text is sure to be obvious to even the stupidest of people. 'ZOMG wuht is this dar box with deh bright txt?!?' If that doesn't work, you can point to the global announcement and go "You are.. RETARDED... duh da duh!"

Fuzz · 07-30-2007, 09:05 PM

And.... We're back!

This has probably been the longest server down time sine the infamous FSN days (you vets know what I'm talking about).

I am sorry for the almost 3 day down time... There was really nothing I could do. there was actually a few hours the server was up early Saturday morning, but complications caused the server to reboot and stay dead for another day or so.

ValueWeb REALLY dropped the ball on this. They had over 40% of there 2500 dedicated servers down for as long as us. I can't even imagine the amount of mad customers they have right now. I know it is a hard/long process to move that many servers cross state, but they should have planned this MUCH better than they did.

Regardless, we're back. I may or may not switch hosts after this incident. I probably called them 10 times along with a few support tickets.

*Note: server may remain slow for the next few days as they continue to work on the network down in Tampa. Thanks again for your patience!!!!

chaosweapon · 07-30-2007, 10:21 PM

Yay, the server is up again! Yeah, the server is really slow at the moment but at least everything turned out to be ok. I hope things get back to normal.