Hardware Migration [09/08/2009] - [09/13/2009]


Tony

Recommended Posts

We will be migrating the accounts on the Skyline server starting on Tuesday September 8th and this will last until Sunday September 13th. The reason for this is Skyline is our last 32bit server we have in our fleet. With it being 32bit it makes it difficult to provide more upgrades in terms of memory if it were ever necessary without sacrificing other performance aspects. It also being our only 32bit machine we have to continue to maintain testing 32bit packages with deployment of features and upgrades. Rather than just using the same specification we will also make an upgrade in hardware as well. The server will be a Dual Xeon 5520 with much more memory as well as SAS hard drives opposed to SATA drives.

For the migration process we will be moving accounts in sections based on IP address. We anticipate no more than 5 minutes of down time per account in order to make the switch. We migrate the account data then re-route the IP address to the new server. Thus there is no down time associated with the upgrade.

The machine itself will be running the same software besides being the 64bit variations and having our tweaks for 64bit systems. So there should be no incompatibilities when switching over. Of course if you run into any issues we recommend you make a ticket as soon as possible. We only plan on keeping the old server online until the 20th of September at which point it will go off line completely.

The time frame given we estimate will not be nearly this long. In the past we have migrated to other hardware without any down time in less than three days. So we anticipate up to a week of being on the new server before the old hardware will be completely removed.

If you have any concerns about this migration please do not hesitate to contact us.

Start Date: 09/08/2009

End Date: 09/13/2009

Estimated Down Time: less than 5 minutes

Duration: 5 days

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Unfortunately we discovered the VLAN our dallas web servers are on does not support a management NIC which our Xeon 55xx systems require. So for this upgrade we're going to use a Dual Xeon 5450 (3Ghz) which in benchmarks matches up almost identical to a 5520. Plus with web servers the big limiter is memory and hard drives and not CPU and that is where the big upgrade is anyways. So here is what the specifications look like on the new system:

Dual Xeon 5450

12GB RAM

4x300GB 15K RPM SAS Raid-10

So it is still a substantial upgrade over the previous system which was a:

Xeon 5430

4GB RAM

4x250GB 7.2K RPM SATA Raid-10

It'll also of course be 64bit so no more headaches for us on our management end or anymore 32bit surprises.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The new server is configured and ready to go. If you're interested in moving early feel free to make a ticket. Please keep in mind shared hosting accounts not on a dedicated IP cannot be moved early. Any other type of account or one with their own IP can be moved early.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.