Forum Maintenance and Server Migration

[tikkathree]

Sorry for the short notice, but the forum will be down for maintenance and a server migration tomorrow, Thursday May 23 from approximately 8:00 am BST (3:00 am EDT) until 2 PM BST (8:00 am EDT).

I would like to set your expectations that this is a realistic 6 hours, with little to no contingency and unlike previous maintenance windows where we have specified a time-frame and delivered early.

This will most definitely be the whole duration, owing to data transfer times and allowing some time to update phpBB software post server migration.

The forum will be set to Maintenance Mode anywhere after 8:00 am (BST).

There will be no connection whatsoever to the forum and users will be greeted with a browser "Unable to establish connection" type message, total blackout, for 3 of these hours from 9:00 am (BST) until 12:00 pm (BST). The hour before and the two hours after, the typical phpBB “Scheduled Maintenance” mode message will show.

Tapatalk functionality will be unavailable to all and sundry this time around and probably see error message “Forum unreachable”, “Server down” or some other doomsday type message.

The Admin Team and Tech Support apologize for the short notice and length of downtime, but this is a major and necessary server migration and software update.

Thank you for your understanding.

[tikkathree]

Part of me wishes that I had some kind of confident grasp on what will be taking place during this event. The other part of me? Well I'm just queitly relieved that we are in such good hands. Thank you @Kip

[JAFO]

@Kip
Congratulations on a smooth process, from the looks of it.

[monkeymax]

Agreed. I’ve been involved on the back end of what I suspect has taken place over the morning. Some bottom clenching happened when I was doing it (some years back on a different forum). The fact it’s all working again is good work. Well done!

[OllyW]

Been getting this error message on and off today.

[Bahnstormer_vRS]

Cheers, Olly.

I've had the same error message this afternoon, which cleared on refreshing the web page.

I't's been mentioned in a thread on 'Forum Functions';- What the heck does this mean? I've never seen it before and I posted a comment about it last night;-

^^^^ Sounds like a good solution @iain to have a bookmark or tab open all the time for the Board Index or, as I do, the Unread Posts.

Only very occasionally do I have to log in afresh.


Moving back to the primary discussion here of the 'Resource Limit is Reached' response, the Admin Team has been in touch today with our IT Support who were doing the Server move and upgrade. They have advised there have been some periodic 'spikes' in activity on the forum with bot activity (mostly the likes of Google as we're on new Servers). This should settle down fairly swiftly.

Overall, our IT Support has offered an analogy to the work that was done yesterday of;-

Unlike trying to shoe horn four Sumo Wrestlers / Lock Forwards / Offensive Linemen in an elevator as our resources began to run dry, we now have the capacity and redundancy of an empty stadium. Safeguards are in place to protect the forum from spikes in activity which, it seems, were triggered a few time yesterday, but has now settled down.

I trust that makes sense.

Guy

Let's continue to monitor over the weekend and I'm sure our IT Support will analyse it on Tuesday.

Guy

[tikkathree]

I've had it on three occasions today but twice it cleared by refreshing. I mention it just for monitoring purposes.

Cheers, Olly.

I've had the same error message this afternoon, which cleared on refreshing the web page.

I't's been mentioned in a thread on 'Forum Functions';- What the heck does this mean? I've never seen it before and I posted a comment about it last night;-

^^^^ Sounds like a good solution @iain to have a bookmark or tab open all the time for the Board Index or, as I do, the Unread Posts.

Only very occasionally do I have to log in afresh.


Moving back to the primary discussion here of the 'Resource Limit is Reached' response, the Admin Team has been in touch today with our IT Support who were doing the Server move and upgrade. They have advised there have been some periodic 'spikes' in activity on the forum with bot activity (mostly the likes of Google as we're on new Servers). This should settle down fairly swiftly.

Overall, our IT Support has offered an analogy to the work that was done yesterday of;-

Unlike trying to shoe horn four Sumo Wrestlers / Lock Forwards / Offensive Linemen in an elevator as our resources began to run dry, we now have the capacity and redundancy of an empty stadium. Safeguards are in place to protect the forum from spikes in activity which, it seems, were triggered a few time yesterday, but has now settled down.

I trust that makes sense.

Guy

Let's continue to monitor over the weekend and I'm sure our IT Support will analyse it on Tuesday.

Guy

[nbg]

I have had the resource limit message 3 times today. However trying again immediately after and all was fine.

Neil

[nbg]

Guy I just had another message when I clicked on your “thanks”…

Ajax error. Loop detected.

Neil