• Steel Soldiers now has a few new forums, read more about it at: New Munitions Forums!

  • Microsoft MSN, Live, Hotmail, Outlook email users may not be receiving emails. We are working to resolve this issue. Please add support@steelsoldiers.com to your trusted contacts.

System outage - Migration

patracy

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
14,653
4,851
113
Location
Buchanan, GA
Folks, we're back up and running again. If you find any issues, please report them here.

Last weekend we encountered a hardware failure on the old server that hosted the site. I won't go too deep into the matter, but this weeks delay was due to the hardware being in another state and being out of support.

Sooooo, as of today, we're on the NEW server.

Our new server is a bit different from our old one. The old server was a physical server that really exists like the PC you're using. That leads to problems when hardware fails.

So our new server is actually a "virtual" server within a physical server. The physical server is owned by our hosting company and is their responsibility to maintain. In the event of a hardware failure, they should be able to spin up our "virtual" image onto another host server in a timely manner.

I was able to get the database copied over as well as attachments this afternoon after we got the old server back up and running.

I had been working on this prior to the GA rally and pretty much had it ready to go on the new server. But I didn't want to work on it the night before I was leaving town. (I knew the internet stinks at the GA rally) As my typical luck would have it, the server decided to croak last Saturday while I was hours away from home and severely lacking in internet and phone connection.

I had us up an on the VM host earlier this week. But I delayed bringing us online until I could get the data we needed. The working copy I had of the forum was dated back to 9/19/13. So if we brought that up, everyone could get on, but when I restored the data, any new threads or PMs made would be lost when I applied the backup from the old server.

I still have more things to address on the site/server. But at least we're functional now. I've been on call with my main job this week and had about 3hrs sleep since thursday morning. So I'm a little tired, but I'm glad this is working.

Sorry again for the delay. :patracy:
 

patracy

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
14,653
4,851
113
Location
Buchanan, GA
There are a few little differences as well. Mainly with the ads. I've gotten new ads from vendors, and I've upgraded that software and streamlined a few things. I still need to get the chatroom back up and running, but that's for another day.

6738_10200869972692029_652947635_n.jpg
 

Katahdin

Active member
1,303
24
38
Location
Scarborough, ME
Thanks for sticking with this! I completely understand the problems associated with old server hardware and why the web server was migrated to a virtual server. Incidentally this also makes upgrading the server a sinch in the future because the operating system is no longer tied to specific hardware. I am sorry you had to suffer through your own on call issues to boot, that sucks, it must have been a kick in the gut to have the old server down. All in all I'd say all of SS is lucky the data was recoverable at all. You did us a great job, SS is in a now in a much better place, now GET SOME REST!!!!
 

gimpyrobb

dumpsterlandingfromorbit!
27,786
757
113
Location
Cincy Ohio
I can't help but feel "the crash" was my fault. My membership expired the day the site crashed. Is it safe to re-up?
 

patracy

Administrator
Staff member
Administrator
14,653
4,851
113
Location
Buchanan, GA
I'm just sorry it took this long. But things weren't under my control until about 4pm today.
 

Recovry4x4

LLM/Member 785
Super Moderator
Steel Soldiers Supporter
34,012
1,810
113
Location
GA Mountains
No more rallies for you Sir. Folks, Drew was at the registration desk right after the crash beating the heck out of the keys. When the effort proved fruitless, he packed his goodies and headed for faster connections. Quite determined he was.
 

Robo McDuff

In memorial Ron - 73M819
Steel Soldiers Supporter
2,892
1,520
113
Location
Czech Republic
Thanks for getting us back, spent a few days supervising an exhibition, so a lot of free time in an out of office situation, thought to catch up with SteelSoldiers...sh#$%$#t.

No criticism, just technical interest and trying to protect our own sites against something like this. Shouldn't a host have at least one back-up system or a raid system so that a single hardware crash can never get everything in one go? Off course with fire or water damage, even that might not be enough, but at least in all but the most severre physical damage it would get sites back up within a reasonable time and the host would handle that automatically, certainly within a day or so? Again, just interested at the technical side of this problem.
 
Top
AdBlock Detected

We get it, advertisements are annoying!

Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks useful features of our website like our supporting vendors. Their ads help keep Steel Soldiers going. Please consider disabling your ad blockers for the site. Thanks!

I've Disabled AdBlock
No Thanks