In an effort to further stress test the new server, we’re moving our own site there… This will result in a brief downtime while the vps is migrated. Should be back up in 30 minutes or so.
Archive for the ‘System Messages’ Category
Jun
2
As sometimes happens with new equipment, it fails… Even to the best equipment. This wasn’t a drive you’d buy at the local office supply or big box electrnics store. This was one of the 4 Western Digital Enterprise class RAID Edition 2 (RE2) drives that failed shortly after being placed in the rack and left to burn in… This is exactly why we let servers sit for a while before using them. No customer data had been placed on the server. Our own website was placed there for a short while, but when the node experienced problems we moved it back to the other server – giving us some real world experience in a problem situation live migration.
After working with it a bit and determining the drive itself was at fault a replacement drive was ordered. The existing drive will be swapped out under WD’s warranty terms. While the node is operational, with no RAID mirror protecting the data, we chose to not place any customers onto the server. So for the time being XEN is not available as an option when ordering a VPS. If you really want XEN and need to sign up today, we can temporarily place you on an OpenVZ node in the same d.c. Once the server is back to a trusted state, we’ll migrate your vps over to the server – but this will result in a small downtime during the migration.
The replacement drive is in FedEx’s hands, and we expect the drive to be delivered tomorow. After it’s in, the drives sync’ed (up to 24 hours), and stress tested, we expect the server to be available for use by the coming weekend.
Edit 6/3: The new drive did in fact arrive today and was the defective replaced. The controller is in the process of rebuilding the array as I type this. Once it is done, I’ll start a process of stressing the drives just to be confident in them before opening the server up to customers… We wouldn’t have normally been as relaxed in the replacement process. But since no customers sites are hosted on the server, we thought it better to take the time and be sure it’s 100% up to the job for which it’s designed.
Turning off power management that messes with Xen… Should be a quick reboot.
Well nothing goes as planned… grub didn’t like the new parameter for Xen. But on the bright side, we got to try out the backup plan for real. And it worked! Restored the container to another server and started it. BTW, no customer sites were affected. Only our own… That’s why we do this stuff with our own data first.
May
28
The ClientExec software is having a minor revision upgrade done to it. It should be available again shortly.
The lagniappeinternet.com website will periodically be unavailable during the next couple of hours…
We are running a full backup, and then live-migrating the site to the new server.
Don’t do not expect it to take long, and will post here if we encounter problems and when it is completed.
14:00 - Backup is done and migration has begun…
14:30 – Lagniappeinternet.com migration is complete and site is back online.
… while the new gt24-2 server is being installed. These servers need to be moved in the rack. Theyshould not be down for very long at all.
This does affect cpwhm1 virtual server since it lives on the X306 server for the time being – it will ‘live migrate’ to the new gt24-2 this coming weekend.
Updates:
11:55 : gt20-1 is back up…
11:59 : new gt24-2 is up…
12:22 : x306 (hypervm / cpwhm1) is up…
May
26
Some of last night’s vzdumps failed because of the kernel module for vzctl … Once the module was reloaded, they were fine. All failed vzdumps were re-run this morning. Other than the lateness of the vzdump, no other functions were affected.
The new CPanel/WHM server is the first in the process of migrating all customer facing websites (with the exception of the HyperVM management console for obvious reasons) to a virtualized environment. Some might ask why we are doing this… Simple it allows us to utilize the existing hardware and procedural infrastructure that exists today to serve our customers better and at the same time provide a managable expansion path with quick response times.
Examples:
1) the VPS enviroment has a mechanism in place to handle backups automatically with 7 days of archives.
2) Tools are already in place to monitor the virtual servers in terms of operational status as well as resource utilization.
3) Re-configuring a virtual server can happen much more easily than a physical server.
4) Facilities to migrate a virtual server’s physical level to another physical server are already in place and can occur signifigantly faster if the need arises.
5) It’s more economical through better utilization of existing physical infrastructure, allowing us to pass the savings on.
6) It’s greener… Goes along with #5, since we’re better utilizing the physical hardware we’re wasting less electricity.
So just a heads up, the shared DirectAdmin server will be virtualized at some point in the not too distant future.
We’re committed to the customer’s experience to actually be improved through the use of virtualized environments… It will allow us to better manage resources and control hard and soft costs at the same time.
Our newest server, gt24-2, is in transit to Dallas to be deployed. With the holiday weekend I’d expect this server will be racked and powered up Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest, and expected to be available for customer use by the end of next week.
GT24-2 is a Dual Quad-Core server (8 cores total) with 32MB of Registered ECC RAM, 4 Western Digital 750Gb Raid Edition 2 hard drives connected to a PERC 5/i controller (with battery back up) in RAID-10 for speed and security! This is our biggest server to date, and is just the next step to provide the best level of service and data protection we can to our customers.
Due to popular demand, we’re not offering CPanel/WHM with Fantastico reseller accounts. Not even shown on the website, this is one of the few places you can learn about the offering and get the links to sign up…
For the time being, the CPanel accounts mirror the DirectAdmin accounts in resource limits and pricing. But don’t expect that to last… Unlike DirectAdmin, we can’t buy the license to CP/WHM outright instead it’s a recurring license expense. So expect the CP/WHM accounts to be slightly more than the DirectAdmin or have a little less resources at the same price point. We’ll know better when the usage becomes better known.
To signup for a CPanel Reseller account don’t use the links on the website (yet), but use this instead: CPanel Reseller Signup page
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