Components updated
Posted on May 15, 2008
Filed Under Updates
During our server maintenance this week, we upgraded several components:
- Plesk - to version 8.4.0 (what’s new)
- Apache (the web server) - to version 2.2.8-1.fc8
- PHP - to version 5.2.4-3
- MySQL - to version 5.0.45-6.fc8
- Ruby - to version 1.8.6.114-1.fc8
- SpamAssassin - to 3.2.4-1.fc8
About that downtime…
Posted on May 15, 2008
Filed Under Incidents, Updates
Before I get started with the whys and wherefores, let me take this opportunity to personally apologize to all of you who’ve been affected by our recent downtime. And let me make it clear that the purpose of this item is not to point fingers, but to give a transparent explanation of what happened and why, and how we’re going to stop this sort of problem from happening in the future.
Background
On 12 May 2008, we initiated a request to our datacenter to upgrade the operating system on our primary server (melvin.smilingpeanut.com) to Fedora Core 8. (We had previously been running FC4.) We were told this would be routine and that backups and transfers of data would be taken care of with minimal involvement on our part. That said, we made sure to back up core data such as user files, databases and mail on our own just in case. The update was to commence on 14 May 2008 in the very early hours of the morning so as to impact our customers as little as possible.
26 hours later…
Posted on May 15, 2008
Filed Under Incidents, Updates
And we’re back. As I write this, techs in two states are restoring access to the websites hosted on melvin.smilingpeanut.com one at a time. We’ll have more updates as things progress.
UPDATE @ 0225 MST: We have verified that all websites hosted on Melvin are functional. For those interested, we will post a timeline as well as a thorough explanation of the day’s events later today. But for now, we need some rest.
IMPORTANT: Scheduled maintenance
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under Announcements, Updates
Sometime in the next 72 hours, we will undergo a scheduled maintenance window in order to upgrade Melvin’s operating system to Fedora Core 8. During this maintenance window, we estimate there to be 1-5 hours of downtime.
We are working with the datacenter to minimize downtime as much as possible. No data will be lost while the server is offline, and we are working to make sure that data and connectivity will be restored as soon as humanly possible.
We have three redundant backups in case of any unexpected problems, and once the server is back online, it will immediately begin serving web sites and mail as normal.
Please check smilingpeanut.net for updates as this maintenance gets underway. Should you have any additional questions, please contact us at 970.449.0844.
Thank you for your continued support of SMILING PEANUT web hosting. We sincerely appreciate your business.