Server migration - a couple of glitches

[tgonhawk1]

A week ago I got an email saying, in part, ...

> Beginning Wednesday February 13th we will be starting the migration of the dal0XX.hawkhost.com server
> which your account NameOfMyDomain.tld  resides on to our new cloud based dal2XX.hawkhost.com system.
> As a result of this migration we will be changing IP addresses on all accounts.
> If you are currently using our nameservers (ns1.hawkhost.com / ns2.hawkhost.com)
> * * * * you don't have to do anything * * * * and will have no downtime.

The migration did happen, and went smoothly. I was not aware of any DNS-caused downtime, as was promised.
However, ... I did have to take a couple of corrective measures for things that came up:

• FTP commands, which previously worked, stopped working.  I now needed to specify Passive mode, which wasn't the case before.
• The change of IP address caused Putty to hiccup, saying "wrong (something or other) in cache" because that had changed.

Both of these were very minor issues, but until I remembered about the server migration, I was wondering why things that
had been working very nicely now were not.

I am posting this just to give anyone else who might encounter these or similar problems a heads up.

One other even more minor gripe:

The first email said: " IP change which we will provide upon completion of the migration. "
The second email said: "New IP Address: Refer to the 'Server Information' link inside cPanel"

Which was not quite what I was expecting there.

[Brian]

Glad to hear the migration went off without any major issues! The new cloud environment you're in is a huge upgrade compared to the baremetal setup from before. As for your concerns:

20 minutes ago, tgonhawk1 said:

FTP commands, which previously worked, stopped working.  I now needed to specify Passive mode, which wasn't the case before.

That one I do not have an answer for. Would you mind submitting a ticket while referencing this thread and ask for it to be escalated and assign to Brian (me)? I'll work with our  guys from there to get an answer / more details from your side.

21 minutes ago, tgonhawk1 said:

The change of IP address caused Putty to hiccup, saying "wrong (something or other) in cache" because that had changed.

This is completely normal and to be expected. In fact this is a good sign! In your SSH client I assume you use either your domain name or the server name dalXXX.hawkhost.com (old server) as the hostname to connect. Since both your domain and the old servers hostname are pointed to the new server IP it means you're connecting to a new machine entirely, but locally (on your computer / in your SSH client) it has the fingerprint for the old server. It prompted you when connecting because it detected this change and was warning you "Hey, someone may be trying to impersonate the server you're connecting to, are you sure this is safe?". This is known as a man-in-the-middle attack. You won't be prompted again now since you've accepted the new machines fingerprint.

28 minutes ago, tgonhawk1 said:

The first email said: " IP change which we will provide upon completion of the migration. "
The second email said: "New IP Address: Refer to the 'Server Information' link inside cPanel"

Completely fair point. Long and short of it this is due to how the migrations work, primarily because not every client in a shared server is on the same IP, so we're not able to send your shared IP in that template so we have to be generic. Not ideal, I completely get that, but it's the most efficient way to communicate with every client regardless of their individual setup (shared IP, dedicated IP, etc.).

[tgonhawk1]

Replying to Brian's points:

1) ftp needing Passive - I will write up a ticket for you (that is now done).

2) Agree - ssh fingerprint change was ok - just seemed a bit worrisome at first, then I remembered about the migration

3) Not a big deal - lots of easy ways to learn the new IP.