Thunderbolt Latest Topics

Hardware Migration [03/01/2012] - [03/03/2012]

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 21:03:22 +0000

Starting on Thursday March 1st we will be migrating the Thunderbolt server to new higher end hardware as well as better system configuration. We feel this will benefit all users on the Thunderbolt server. We estimate this will be completed no later than Saturday March 3rd.

We expect no more than 5 minutes of downtime per account as we will be moving accounts to the new server then re-routing the IP address to the new hardware. This means there will be no changes to DNS and as a result no dns progation issues. In our experience our migration method means the large majority of users will not even realize that they've switched servers. If you do however run into any issues do not hesitant to contact us as our system administrators are prepared to resolve any issues experienced.

The new Thunderbolt server will be similar to that of our recent deployment of servers:

Old Thunderbolt:

Dual Xeon E5520

24GB RAM

4x300GB Raid-10

New Thunderbolt:

Dual Xeon X5670

24GB RAM

4x600GB Raid-10

So this is a pretty big upgrade as it will have four additional CPU cores with 8 to the operating system counting hyper threading. It will also be using 600GB disks over 300GB disks of the old system.

Once the migration starts as accounts transfer over they will go onto the newthunderbolt hostname until the entire migration is complete when the new hardware will become thunderbolt and the old server oldthunderbolt.

If you have any questions regarding the maintenance do not hesitate to contact us. Our system administration department is available to answer any questions regarding this.

Start Date: 03/01/2012

End Date: 03/03/2012

Estimated Down Time: less than 5 minutes

Duration: 3 days

Memory Upgrade [05/18/2011]

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:16:55 +0000

On Wednesday May 18th between 1:00am and 4:00am EDT we will be adding additional memory to the Thunderbolt server to improve performance and general system stability. Adding the additional memory will require the machine to be turned off so there will be between 30 and 45 minutes of down time.

If you have any questions regarding this maintenance notice please do not hesitate to contact our systems administration department.

Date: 05/18/2011

Start time (EDT): 1:00am

End time (EDT): 4:00am

Duration: 3 hours

Estimated Down Time: 30 minutes

Kernel Upgrade [04/08/2011]

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:55:05 +0000

We'll be performing a kernel upgrade on on Friday April 8th between 11PM-2AM EDT. While we use KSplice to keep our kernels up-to-date for critical bugs and security fixes it doesn't pull in new features from the upstream kernel. As a result we perform semi-annual kernel updates to keep everything up-to-date and in-line with upstream.

Date: 04/08/2011

Start time (EDT): 11:00pm

End time (EDT): 2:00AM

Duration: 1 hour

Estimated Down Time: 10 minutes

PHP 5.2 Upgrade [04/08/2011]

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:48:05 +0000

On Friday April 8th between 1:30pm and 2:30pm EDT we will be upgrading the Thunderbolt server's PHP 5.2.x to the latest 5.2.x version. We do not expect any down time during the maintenance window. We will be upgrading the system PHP to the latest version first then the web servers so for a short time there may be different versions handling command line cron jobs. The reason for this is to get various fixes for LSAPI as well as PHP which we believe is causing random crashes from PHP in the last week.

If you have any questions about this maintenance window do not hesitate to contact support.

Date: 04/08/2011

Start time (EDT): 1:30pm

End time (EDT): 2:30pm

Estimated Down Time: None

Duration: 1 hour

Kernel Upgrade [12/17/2010]

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 17:16:46 +0000

We'll be performing a kernel upgrade on on Friday December 17th. This upgrade will allow us enhanced resource tracking to help address resource abuse issues.

Date: 12/17/2010

Start time (EST): 10:00am

End time (EST): 11:00am

Duration: 1 hour

Estimated Down Time: 10 minutes