Celica-gts.com Will Be Moving To Another Server

[Steven Benner]

We will be moving to a new, more powerful server. This will be happening next Friday (Sept, 18th) or Saturday (Sept, 19th).

PLEASE GO TO THE BETA FORUMS AND TEST YOUR LOGIN.

If you can't login after the conversion you will need to create a new account, I wont be fixing accounts for people who didn't test. This is what the beta process is for, identify bugs before they are in a live environment where modification are dangerous.

The information and beta feedback thread can be found here.

Here is the process:

• I will start by locking the forums and the database. The forums will be unreachable as soon as I lock them.
• As soon as I lock the database I will back up the web site.
• Then export all of the data from the database. This process takes approximately 20 minutes.
• After I make a backup of the database I will archive the forums files, such as attached files and avatars. This takes another 20 minutes.
• Then I will download the data to my computer, since this server limits connections to about 150Kb/s this takes well over an hour to download the gigabyte of data.
• Once I have the data installed on my private computer I will begin the conversion process. This migrates all of the old forums data and attachments to the new forums schema. This process takes about two hours to process the 300,000 posts.
• I will then export the converted database and forums attachments and upload it to the new server. This takes another hour or two.
• Once the data is on the new server I will import it into the database system there. This will be another 20 minutes or so.
• At this point I will switch the DNS information for celica-gts.com to point to the new server. The forums will be operation, but not fully working on the new server. So they will be locked. I will need to go in and set up and fix all of the little bugs we have encountered in the beta process.
• Final testing be me, verify that everything is working.
• Unlock the forums and let operation resume.

I predict that this whole process will take about 12 hours if I don't hit any snags along the way. I've done this 3 times now for testing and so I can memorize the process and debug the conversion scripts. So the process is fairly well tested.

The DNS migration may take anywhere from 5 minutes (for people on normal ISPs using Firefox), to 48 hours (for people on long-term caching ISPs), to 30 days (for people on ultra-long-term caching proxies). During this time you will be stuck seeing the old server, a dead site which cannot be used. Once your local DNS is updated you will be automatically taken to the new server.

Here are my suggestions for making the transfer faster:

• Use Firefox, it has a smarter DNS caching scheme and is a better browser in every way
• Do not use a proxy if you can help it. If you absolutely must use a proxy, then you should change to another proxy after I report the DNS change. I will post a notification on all forum URLs that the DNS has been changed.

[Dpurser]

Login seems to work like a charm for me.  The avatar pics seem to be a bit large.  This may have been addressed already, but I didn't want to read all the threads to see if this was already mentioned.  BTW, red seems a little funky.  I like the blue better.
Thanks for the forum!
D Purser

[Steven Benner]

Forums going down soon.