Server maintenance - Monday 9/28

[Janet H]

On Monday 9/28 our data center will be doing some updates and maintenance. They have notified us that our servers may be offline for some period*of time and that the maintenance*window is 4PM - 11PM EDT.

We have little control over this and there*may be no noticeable*service interruption but I wanted to let you know that it's a possibility.

 

[MRG]

Thank you hope all goes well.[emoji2958]

 

[Closet_Gamer]

It's like the board is headed for the dark side of the moon.

2 days until LoS...

 

[OldShooter]

... the maintenance*window is 4PM - 11PM EDT. We have little control over this ...

I suggest that you point out to your vendor that more professional companies schedule maintenance in the wee hours of the morning to minimally disrupt their customers, rather than scheduling to be most convenient for their staff.

 

[Sojourner]

I suggest that you point out to your vendor that more professional companies schedule maintenance in the wee hours of the morning to minimally disrupt their customers, rather than scheduling to be most convenient for their staff.

+1

In my former life, I was involved with many server maintenance/upgrade projects, and we always scheduled these to happen late at night (after 11pm, typically). We housed our servers in an enterprise-class data center, and, IIRC, our data center never scheduled any maintenance that might have led to an outage during the day. If they had done this, I believe it would have violated their contract with us that guaranteed 99.95% uptime.

 

[MRG]

+1

In my former life, I was involved with many server maintenance/upgrade projects, and we always scheduled these to happen late at night (after 11pm, typically). We housed our servers in an enterprise-class data center, and, IIRC, our data center never scheduled any maintenance that might have led to an outage during the day. If they had done this, I believe it would have violated their contract with us that guaranteed 99.95% uptime.

Yeah that was my life for a while too. Of course we were paid millions, not for hosting a social media retirement site[emoji4]

 

[Gumby]

I suggest that you point out to your vendor that more professional companies schedule maintenance in the wee hours of the morning to minimally disrupt their customers, rather than scheduling to be most convenient for their staff.

You should ask for your money back. Oh, that's right . . . this site is free.

 

[target2019]

You should ask for your money back. Oh, that's right . . . this site is free.

I got my refund! Thanks!


I think it takes an admin to understand the seriousness of certain situations, and that difficult choices need to be made.

And I won't complain about free...

 

[OldShooter]

You should ask for your money back. Oh, that's right . . . this site is free.

Presumably the ad sponsorship is generating the cash that pays the hosting service. That ad revenue goes to zero when the hosting service shuts the site down during prime time. If the site owner doesn't care about revenue unnecessarily going to zero then I guess the hosting service is no problem.

 

[REWahoo]

Presumably the ad sponsorship is generating the cash that pays the hosting service. That ad revenue goes to zero when the hosting service shuts the site down during prime time. If the site owner doesn't care about revenue unnecessarily going to zero then I guess the hosting service is no problem.

Presumably the guy who owns this website, and 50+ others, knows the cost/benefit equation for maximizing profits on these discussion boards. But I'm sure he appreciates your input.

 

[Calico]

Presumably folks who are retired have plenty of options to entertain themselves when one of the millions of available websites in the universe (might) be unavailable for a few hours.

 

[Dtail]

Presumably folks who are retired have plenty of options to entertain themselves when one of the millions of available websites in the universe (might) be unavailable for a few hours.

Amen

 

[RunningBum]

Presumably folks who are retired have plenty of options to entertain themselves when one of the millions of available websites in the universe (might) be unavailable for a few hours.

But what if I have a sudden notion to pay off my mortgage, or have to decide when to take social security during the downtime

 

[Calico]

But what if I have a sudden notion to pay off my mortgage, or have to decide when to take social security during the downtime

 

[OldShooter]

Presumably the guy who owns this website, and 50+ others, knows the cost/benefit equation for maximizing profits on these discussion boards. But I'm sure he appreciates your input.

Hard to say. In my company I'm sure there were many small optimizations that I, as CEO, didn't know about. And non-technical troops are likely to take scheduled server downtime as a given, since they are neither directly concerned with revenue flow nor with vendor management. I'd give it 50/50 at best that this issue has made it up the chain. That's the nature of organizations.

 

[Boho]

On Monday 9/28 our data center will be doing some updates and maintenance.

I think this forum is one of several run by "Social Knowledge" who probably have their own data center for the forums they host. Providing competitive services isn't an issue because all the websites are theirs. The only other server involved is Cloudflare which doesn't seem to have downtime scheduled this month.

...which doesn't address the ad revenue issue, but overnight tech staff is probably expensive.

 

[target2019]

When data center host says upgrade, you prepare. It's a routine that's been going on for a long time.

Critical stuff gets done all the time. Most users are uninformed about tech details and have no idea the vast majority of upgrades get done. A warning is just that, and not a call to dissension.

 

[RobbieB]

Prepare for what?

 

[W2R]

Janet, thanks for letting us know, so we won't worry if we can't connect to the site during that time.

 

[Sunset]

Thanks for scheduling for that time, as that's when I cook supper, and then stream shows until 11pm.

In reality they will probably use the load balancer to shift the traffic to other servers as each is upgraded.

 

[MichaelB]

Prepare for what?

 

[Chuckanut]

I got my refund! Thanks!


I think it takes an admin to understand the seriousness of certain situations, and that difficult choices need to be made.

And I won't complain about free...

I waited a bit longer and got double my money back! What a country!

I know from my IT days that computer systems have outages. The scheduled outages are always better than the unscheduled ones.

 

[target2019]

I waited a bit longer and got double my money back! What a country!

I know from my IT days that computer systems have outages. The scheduled outages are always better than the unscheduled ones.

It sounds like this is planned or scheduled maintenance rather than scheduled outage.
Still waiting for my could-be-an-outage credit!

 

[Janet H]

When data center host says upgrade, you prepare. It's a routine that's been going on for a long time.

Critical stuff gets done all the time. Most users are uninformed about tech details and have no idea the vast majority of upgrades get done. A warning is just that, and not a call to dissension.

Interestingly enough a few hours ago they e-mailed to call off the fire drill "for an indefinite period..."

 

[ERD50]

I suggest that you point out to your vendor that more professional companies schedule maintenance in the wee hours of the morning to minimally disrupt their customers, rather than scheduling to be most convenient for their staff.

It's always the wee hours of the morning somewhere!

-ERD50