Apache 2 Migration Schedule

[GatorPatrick]

Hello,

The following servers will be migrated to Apache2 + CentOS5:

January 4th, 2009 - 11:00 PM CST
portland
waco
seattle
tulsa

Please note, this date may be subject to change should the need arise. Please make sure you check this forum post.

[GatorPatrick]

We will be performing scheduled maintenance on your server. During this time we will be upgrading our Apache web server to version 2.2.10 (from 1.3.4x). We will also be upgrading the operating system from CentOS 4.7 to CentOS 5.2.

This upgrade will allow us to provide you with a higher level of performance and security. During the upgrade we will also be instilling a new set of mod_security rules which will add to the overall protection our clients websites. We will also be upgrading our firewall software which help deflect distributed denial of service attacks and ensure that your sites are kept functioning at optimal levels.

The server will stay online during this time however while the Apache service is recompiled your websites and your client websites will be unavailable for an estimated 30-45 minutes. During this time a generic “Under Maintenance” will be displayed.

[TigerWolf]

Thankyou very much for the email. It is very important to know what is happening and to be able to notify my customers.

Its good to know my suggestion (and probably from lots of other forum members) was considered.

[sino]

Will email service be affected as well? Thank you.

[bwuk]

Hello. I noticed you are installing new mod_security rules. While I am grateful for ongoing improvements and advance notice of that, I just need to know if there will be any changes to things like the following:

open_base_dir
localised php.ini or .htacess php settings
.. & any other changes that may cause permissions or path errors.

Thanks.

[Nathan_O]

I am grateful for the ongoing work on the servers and realise that most clients would be in the US.

However, Sunday 10PM CST is 2pm Monday in Australia. Obviously not my preferred time for maintenance.........

[wacipi]

Don't expect a reply, but hope you are reading this. The last time you did an upgrade you completely messed up the server as most features were never turned back on until we called in to complain, one by one. The mail quit working, the fantastico quit working and php programs were all fouled up. Is this what we are to expect?

I do hope you are doing a major backup of everything before hand and
I wish you guys would sometimes live by the rule... if it isn't broken, don't fix it!

[Guadalupe]

Muchas gracias por el mail, realmente es genial saber que esta pasando. Gracias por hacerlo un domingo a la mañana.

Thank you very much for the mail, really great to know that this is happening. Thank you for doing a Sunday morning.

[copperpenny]

Thank you for the advanced notice. Can you tell me How long the maintenance window is expected to last so that I can provide my clients with and approximate time range?

Also, I have not been able to find any option in the WebHost manager that will allow me to send a notification email to all of my client on the server. Am I missing it or is this something I need to set up under my own email account as a mail list?

I'd appreciate feed back on the latter from any forum member.

Thanks!

[kmaw]

Originally Posted by copperpenny

Also, I have not been able to find any option in the WebHost manager that will allow me to send a notification email to all of my client on the server. Am I missing it or is this something I need to set up under my own email account as a mail list?

It's best to setup your own list -- to be sure the right people get the email.

But on my dedicated there is an "Email All Users" under account functions. I don't imagine that is available on reseller boxes.

[neocorps]

Thanks for the e-mail!

I'm sending an e-mail to my customers as i type.

And regarding the send e-mail to all my customers, how do you do this in a reseller account?, right now i got my own mailing list but it would be nice to have an automatic way to send them.

cya!

[GatorPatrick]

Originally Posted by sino

Will email service be affected as well? Thank you.

Email will only be slightly affected, there will be a restart on the server which will cause a 5 minute outage or so.

[GatorPatrick]

Originally Posted by bwuk

Hello. I noticed you are installing new mod_security rules. While I am grateful for ongoing improvements and advance notice of that, I just need to know if there will be any changes to things like the following:

open_base_dir
localised php.ini or .htacess php settings
.. & any other changes that may cause permissions or path errors.

Thanks.

Open basedir is currently not in use since we utilize suPHP (you cannot affect another users files anyways due to permissions.) Some htaccess directives will change however we have a script which will make those changes for you already. We've already done 650 shared servers so we are confident there will not be many issues at all.

[GatorPatrick]

Originally Posted by copperpenny

Thank you for the advanced notice. Can you tell me How long the maintenance window is expected to last so that I can provide my clients with and approximate time range?

Also, I have not been able to find any option in the WebHost manager that will allow me to send a notification email to all of my client on the server. Am I missing it or is this something I need to set up under my own email account as a mail list?

I'd appreciate feed back on the latter from any forum member.

Thanks!

The maintenance window usually lasts about 30-45 minutes that your clients will be able to notice. The entire process takes about an hour and a half. It's best for you to setup your own list. PHPlist from fantastico would actually be great for this.

[MikeC]

Originally Posted by GatorPatrick

During this time a generic “Under Maintenance” will be displayed.

That is 'generic' as in it does not identify HG, correct? After all, we are talking about reseller accounts.

MC

[alvin]

I'm on the server called "miura" which was not listed in your upgrade list. It is still reporting to be running Apache 1.3 but yesterday an htaccess file that has been working for the last 2 weeks stopped working and began reporting server errors and displaying a blank page. The server error reports "RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression." Interesting enough, we do NOT receive this error on our office development boxes which mirror the same environment. Consequently, in order to provide access to the site, we have removed the file completely causing a host of other problems. Has a date been determined for the upgrade of our server and has some partial upgrade already taken place on the server?

[GatorPatrick]

Originally Posted by MikeC

That is 'generic' as in it does not identify HG, correct? After all, we are talking about reseller accounts.

MC

Exactly. It's completely unbranded. It just says "Under Maintenance. We will be back soon" on a gray background.

[mahfuzul]

Hello

We have a reseller a/c at brougham.websitewelcome.com . today server was down more then 4 hours. Some client already notice to leave us. As per your Schedule maintenance date and time is November 12th @ 10:00 PM CST. That time is very much pick for us. can u make it 11:00 A.M. CST??

Thank You

Murad

[GatorPatrick]

Originally Posted by mahfuzul

Hello

We have a reseller a/c at brougham.websitewelcome.com . today server was down more then 4 hours. Some client already notice to leave us. As per your Schedule maintenance date and time is November 12th @ 10:00 PM CST. That time is very much pick for us. can u make it 11:00 A.M. CST??

Thank You

Murad

Unfortunately we cannot reschedule the maintenance for 11:00AM as this is prime time for the vast majority of our clients. We schedule the migrations late in the evening specifically to avoid the business hours of the day. The brougham outage was due to disk problems (it was emergency maintenance) and I apologize that it inconvencied you, I know those situations can be tough when you have clients to deal with.

[GatorPatrick]

I apologize, emails that were sent out for November 17th accidently said Sunday instead of Monday, small typographical error. The servers listed for the 17th will be performed on Monday. (We are also aware 10:00PM CST was there twice)

[zmiservices]

will you be taking backups directly prior to this upgrade??????

[GatorPatrick]

No client data will be affected, but we will have fresh backups stored. Your data is not at risk with this upgrade. During the entire shared server upgrades (several hundred servers) we never experienced any data loss whatsoever.

[zmiservices]

cool thank gator Patrick for the reassurance

[idearius]

Thank you for the e-mail. I've been asking for such advance notice for a long time.

Best of luck with the upgrade.

[reca]

hi there, great news with the upgrade. Looking forward to a smooth upgrade to the servers.

One question though, our services is sitting on citation and we are serving asian clients, would it be possible to change the upgrade times to an earlier schedule? And will there be an email informing us of the upgrade completion?

Please advice.