[MikeDVB]

On Saturday, June 25th, 2011 we will be rebooting our VPS nodes Atlantis and Boreas for routine software upgrades. We expect the nodes to take around 5 minutes to reboot themselves and all VPS online and fully operational within 15 to 20 minutes. We are going to schedule a full two hours just in case we run across anything unexpected during the upgrades or reboots however we don't anticipate downtime to extend beyond a total of 30 minutes.

This maintenance will begin at 2 AM GMT-5.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns do feel free to respond to this thread.

Thanks!

[frankacter]

Thanks for the heads up. Couple of questions:

1. When you say routine software updates, how often does this happen (every 3 months, 6 months, etc?)

2. As part of your routine process do you perform/validate a full backup of the servers pre-maintenance upgrade/reboot as a precaution should anything unexpected occur?

Thanks,
Frank

[MikeDVB]

frankacter, on 15 June 2011 - 01:34 AM, said:

1. When you say routine software updates, how often does this happen (every 3 months, 6 months, etc?)

Realistically it should be done anytime a new system kernel is released, however, we try not to do it more than once every 3 months. If there is an urgent security update that requires a new kernel we will schedule emergency maintenance for the update.

frankacter, on 15 June 2011 - 01:34 AM, said:

2. As part of your routine process do you perform/validate a full backup of the servers pre-maintenance upgrade/reboot as a precaution should anything unexpected occur?

We do this every night whether there is a reboot scheduled or not and we keep each restoration point for 28 days. All we're doing is updating the system kernel, we're not making any major changes that can't be rolled back quickly (i.e. within minutes) if something simply doesn't work correctly after reboot.

Realistically the maintenance shouldn't take nearly as long as scheduled/estimated but we'd rather estimate a little high just in case something does come up that needs attention that was unexpected.

[frankacter]

Thanks for the follow up and for providing the heads up.

Realistically, you guys are awesome.

[MikeDVB]

We are prepared to conduct this maintenance and will begin in approximately 12 minutes (when the scheduled maintenance window starts).

[MikeDVB]

Atlantis has been rebooted, is back online, and all VPS on that node will be coming back online within the next 2 to 15 minutes.

[MikeDVB]

Boreas is now being rebooted.

[MikeDVB]

Both servers have been restarted and all services are back on-line. It may take a few minutes for everything calm back down to normal but otherwise this maintenance is finished.

[frankacter]

Thanks for the update. Barely a blip on the radar for us. You set the bar way to high for your competitors.

[fshagan]

I agree with frankacter. I got the notice from my monitors, but I knew what it was, so I didn't panic.

[MikeDVB]

fshagan, on 25 June 2011 - 02:07 PM, said:

I agree with frankacter. I got the notice from my monitors, but I knew what it was, so I didn't panic.

Yeah, it didn't take long to complete, around 5 to 10 minutes as estimated. Each VPS boots up one at a time after the nodes themselves come back online but being higher end hardware with raid10 SAS drives they boot up fairly quick .