Merry Christmas Everyone! Presents are here!
Well let me clarify, our 4 new servers are here!
I will be dragging a friend with me to do heavy lifting, but the servers are headed to the Datacenter in Bridgewater, NJ tomorrow.
Over the next several days I will work on imaging them and spinning up a database backup, and then transferring load to the new MySQL Cluster. After that I will work on building the new front-end cluster and move that live, and in the process I will be re-configuring the existing servers for Tertiary services.
The good news is, while there could be as much as 2-4 hours downtime while I transfer the database from the live server to the new cluster, downtime will actually be quite minimal. Once the database is done (and we should see great strides in site performance once that happens) downtime will be basically non-existent as I will basically be building on-top of the infrastructure we already have, and then taking off-line servers from the current infrastructure once their replacements are in place.
Thank you all for bearing with us, and we hope this server upgrade will last us for a while without any MAJOR system upgrades.
-Piper
Comments
Yay!
Thanks Piper!!!
have you thought about
Going to virtual servers on the new equipment? We went that direction a couple years ago at work and it does have advantages
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
We tried it last year
Spent almost two months working with virtual servers and cloud computing. Would be about three times as expensive as what we are doing now to get similar speed and reliability. We couldn't even have afforded to try it but someone footed the bill for us to make the attempt. And what we have now is not enough which is why we are buying and installing new hardware.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
I remember the cloud computing you tried
Yeah I agree that didn't work very well. What I was suggesting was virtual private server that reside on your own hardware, not cloud computing.
I have no idea how your set up operates but I'm guessing you have the web server, then an SQL server at the minimum?
You would set up the new hardware to run as a single virtualization server then run the web and SQL and any other servers you need on that as independent virtual servers.
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Right now
Right now we have two database servers, two or three (i forget) front end servers, a caching server and a file server. We're going to shuffle things around but Piper would have to be the one to tell you just how.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Cloud Ambitions
I definately have given thought to virtualizing everything in a private cloud. Solutions lile Openstack, Cloudstack, ovirt and OnApp are all on my radar.
I am currently tryimg to find a one stack fits all soultion for all our internal needs where Im not going to need to program our own api integrations and I even have lots of good software I develeoped from our previous cloud project so thst we can play with on demand upgrades as needed.
The new hardware is even perfect for such an upgrade trial as we purchased with cloud provisioning in mind.
I just dont know of everyone wants to wait for me to learn on the job implementimg a new cloud infrastructure while the site is less than perfect.
Also my storage solutions are still SAS based which is fine for on server storage and a low use fileserver and NFS but im not sure it would scale well for cloud. largescale SSD pods are still not in budget. And file/data IO was one of our major bottlenecks in cloud trial.
-Piper
-Piper
LOVE YOU
for all the work you do for our enjoyment
Postponed
Postponed till Friday... Everyone think happy thoughts/pray/etc and hope that Amy doesn't kill me as there are servers on the kitchen floor! :P
-Piper
Well if you didn't
Load up their trays with so much food they wouldn't fall.
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