DCN911.COM Off-Network Support

02/11/07 10:16 PM Central: MAINTENANCE POSTPONED – due to cooling system issue at the new data center, the migration of the ’svensbluff’ server to the new data center has been postponed to Friday or Saturday, February 16-17, 2007. We have not been given an exact downtime window yet, but we will post it here, and e-mail all customers, once the new window has been confirmed by our upstream.

Click below for more details about the move and the new facility.

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Handy Networks, the upstream provider for shared server svensbluff, is moving to a new data center in Downtown Denver. Our server svensbluff is scheduled to be moved between 10 PM Monday, February 12 and 6 AM Tuesday, February 13, 2007.

The server may be offline for much or all of this time. The server’s being offline during this period is NOT cause for worry or alarm; it means everything is going according to plan.

Because servers are being moved by real human beings, in batches, it is impossible to say whether our server will be in the front of the moving van (longer downtime) or the back of the moving van (shorter downtime) — it’s just one of those physical logistical things that is impossible to guess. We have been given the 8-hour window of 10 PM - 6 AM, and we’ve been told to expect to be offline for much or all of that window.

(1) How it will be done: The server is simply being powered-down, physically removed from its rack, put in a van, driven approx. 30 minutes to the new facility, carried upstairs, put in its new rack, and rebooted.

(2) Note that nowhere above is there any mention of data being lost. NO DATA WILL BE LOST. This is simply the moving of equipment from Point A to Point B, much in the same way you would move your belongings from one home to another.

(3) To protect against the very unlikely event of physical damage (due to car accident, human clumsiness, damage to servos from bumps in the road) we are manually transferring server backups to an off-network server which is capable of running client sites on an emergency/short-term basis. We will have technicians on-call and on-duty in communication with Handy Networks technicians to get the earliest possible notice if something does physically go wrong; at that point, our technicians will begin to bring client sites up on the back-up server. We will automatically re-route traffic to the back-up server using our nameservers, so only clients who use 3rd-party DNS will need to do anything with their domains. (We will post here if clients using 3rd-party DNS do actually need to make any changes.) If you use our nameservers, though, you will not need to do anything even in a worst-case scenario. Handy Networks has replacement equipment on hand to set up for clients if there is any physical damage to systems. That replacement equipment will be racked and installed promptly to assist the affected client with getting their sites back online. **Again, this is very, very unlikely. The steps cited here are only a contingency plan for the worst-case scenario, which we do not expect to even occur. We just like to be prepared.**

This is regular, scheduled-type maintenance and no cause for alarm. It is part of our data center’s long-term plan for stability and expansion. Their new facility is much larger than the old facility, with plenty of room for expansion, which means there will not be a need for them to move again any time soon.

We will update our website with new network information as soon as it is available. We don’t want to pester the data center for the information right now, as they are a bit… busy. :)

If you have any questions, this site and our support desk will remain online the entire time. We are here and happy to assist you however we can. We will post updates as the maintenance progresses throughout the night and morning.

Thank you!

DCSN Team