Category Archives: Server: websrv02

Scheduled Replacement of websrv02 Hardware

This is an important notice to inform websrv02 users that we will be replacing the websrv02 server hardware on Friday, February 19th, 2010. The current hardware is about four years old, and while it has not given us any problems we like to make sure our hardware is always in tip-top shape.

The websrv02 server will be unavailable for a short period of time while we shut the old system down and bring the new one online (approximately 20 minutes). This downtime is currently scheduled for:

Friday, February 19th, 2010 around 1:00PM EST

Important Website Warning: While the server downtime itself will be short, we will be starting the data transfer between the old server to the new server at approximately 10:45AM. It is important that you *do not make any changes to your website* between 10:30AM and 2:00PM EST on Friday or your changes may be lost once the new server is brought online.

Important E-Mail Warning: We will be shutting down incoming mail service on websrv02 at approximately 11:00AM EST to prevent any e-mail loss. If someone attempts to send you an e-mail on Friday between 11:00AM and 1:00PM EST the message will stay in their servers mail queue and will automatically resend once the mail service on the new server is brought online again.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause; however we feel that this is an important upgrade to ensure the long term quality of service you have come to expect.

DigitalOrphans Update (v11)

Server Downtime: websrv02
On Saturday, September 16th at approximately 5:25PM EST we had some unexpected downtime on websrv02. This was caused by a permissions problem during a standard RedHat package update. The issue was resolved after about 15 – 20 minutes when Greg found the issue and corrected it. Users may not have actually noticed an issue at all since it was a problem with DNS and it only affected new queries to Bind. websrv02 was rebooted during this update.

PHP Updated: websrv02
Thanks to Greg’s persistence and assistance, we have also upgraded PHP on websrv02 to PHP 5.1.6. If you had PHP scripts running on websrv02, please check them out for any compatibility issues.

Server Maintenance: websrv01
We need to do some updates to websrv01 as well and we’re thinking that Sunday morning would be ideal for this. Updates will be performed to RedHat Enterprise on websrv01 on Sunday, September 24th @ 10:00AM EST. Downtime should be minimal if any, although we will need to perform a reboot of the server. A PHP upgrade to PHP 4.4.4 will also be done at this time.

Future Maintenance: websrv01
We still have not decided on a date to perform the upgrade of Plesk on websrv01 to version 8.0.1; although I will consult with Greg about this shortly and provide a solid date. After we have upgraded Plesk to the 8.0 release, we will shortly there after be upgrading PHP to version 5.1.6 as well. As previously stated, please make sure that all PHP scripts on the server are compatible with PHP 5.1.

DigitalOrphans Update (v10)

  1. Server Maintenance Status Report
    Just a quick update to let everyone know that the required server upgrades were performed successfully this evening. All RedHat Errata were applied on both websrv01 and websrv02 and both servers were rebooted without incident. websrv02 also received a Plesk update which pushed it to version 8.0.1. The only thing that was not completed was the PHP 5.1 upgrade on websrv02; I have read of a few minor issues I must first look into regarding the webmail application (Horde) and PHP 5.1 compatibility. I will be investigating this over the weekend (likely Sunday evening), but I will not be scheduling any downtime for this upgrade because generally it will happen so fast that no-one would notice.
  2. Conclusions
    I am always a happy camper when upgrades go “as-planned” 😉 If anyone notices any problems or is having trouble accomplishing something that was previously working, please contact me immediately.