# VI to move to a new server soon



## Frederick Russ (Apr 26, 2017)

Just a heads up: 

We are finding it less attractive to stay with the current hosting company who are using previous generation technology. So we are going to be moving to a new server soon with SSD technology and a greater integration of our board's software in the architecture.

Why announce?

This may happen as early as this weekend. We've been waiting for the perfect time to interrupt the forum temporarily and realized that there really isn't any perfect time! So we'll find the best slow moment we can to do the shift. This may take a day or two for the urls and servers to line up and propagate properly so everyone can access the board. 

We are using this also as a launching point for some new and exciting changes for VI Control Forum for 2017. We love you all and want the house to support you in your dreams, aspirations, networking, creativity in flow and in the most unintrusive and intuitive way. 

More later as soon as we have a date & time. 

Best,

Frederick Russ
VI Control Forum


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## chillbot (Apr 26, 2017)

How much money do we hafta donate?


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## Maxime Luft (Apr 26, 2017)

chillbot said:


> How much money do we hafta donate?



Something like 40 000$, isn't it?

Makes about 2.91$ for each member, as we are currently 13 767.
"I am very concerned about member apathy.
Your donation is both an expression and a statement. So is the lack of one."


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## creativeforge (Apr 26, 2017)

^ Really, guys? Is that all the wisdom and encouragement nuggets you can afford at this time? Stop and consider the intricate complexity of such an upgrade (which many of you already gave toward during the fund-raiser), rather than bitch-slap Frederick publicly. 

Really. Come on!


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## tack (Apr 26, 2017)

Frederick Russ said:


> This may take a day or two for the urls and servers to line up and propagate properly so everyone can access the board.


Ideally you'd lower the DNS TTL in advance of the migration. Something even as low as 30 seconds isn't unheard of. Then you'll be in a position to make a speedy cutover -- notwithstanding those resolvers which fail to honor the TTL anyway. (Which is frustratingly the case with certain Asian carriers, but they reap what they sow.)


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## Puzzlefactory (Apr 26, 2017)

Slow for who? Europeans or Americans..(or other time zone residents)?


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## Frederick Russ (Apr 26, 2017)

Ah I hear the frustration. Perhaps this can help:

First the upgrade costs the community nothing. This is being handled by me out of pocket. Even though the price is roughly $50 more than what we are currently paying per month;
Secondly, the forum software requires more resources that our current server is able to provide;
Thirdly, simply from a hardware perspective, we nearly lost the forum but had a recent backup (but still lost 14 hours of posts) because of hardware failure from the last VI outage. It wasn't just a DoD attack. The hard drive failed between scheduled backups;
We are getting many error alerts since the last hardware upgrade which is due to the current configuration of the server itself.
Complaints to the server techs are minimized and downplayed by the hosting company. This led to the failure of the hard drive - and they're still downplaying the problem. I don't know about you, but that's not good enough. 
So we're upgrading both the server and the service using experts in the forum software to specifically handle maintenance of both software and hardware. The downside is that the forum will be down while this happens - its a necessary inconvenience - but we'll have a faster forum.

In answer to the question, "slow for who?", slow for anyone who uses this particular software in better configurations by comparison. Plus the elimination of errors because of an optimized system set up and maintenance schedule.

I hope this helps.


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## creativeforge (Apr 26, 2017)

Thank you Frederick, 

This will also give us peace of mind for the upcoming new updates and upgrades to be done, sharper monitoring of server activity and quicker intervention if needed. The forum has grown from slightly over 10,000 in June 2015, to over 13,500 to date. It's a win-win situation, by all accounts!


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## Frederick Russ (Apr 26, 2017)

Maxime Luft said:


> Something like 40 000$, isn't it?
> 
> Makes about 2.91$ for each member, as we are currently 13 767.
> "I am very concerned about member apathy.
> Your donation is both an expression and a statement. So is the lack of one."



I hear the term I used is unpopular. I'll reconsider the term. I'll submit that perhaps its not apathy if those who aren't helping out really could care less. Some do. Currently, less than 3% are covering 95% of the forum costs. I cover the rest. And I can guarantee that is nowhere near the price you are using.


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 26, 2017)

tack said:


> Ideally you'd lower the DNS TTL in advance of the migration. Something even as low as 30 seconds isn't unheard of. Then you'll be in a position to make a speedy cutover -- notwithstanding those resolvers which fail to honor the TTL anyway. (Which is frustratingly the case with certain Asian carriers, but they reap what they sow.)


impressive....... you are also good with the IT stuff Tack?

that is what might be called an all round composer. :D


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## Silence-is-Golden (Apr 26, 2017)

Frederick Russ said:


> Just a heads up:
> 
> We are finding it less attractive to stay with the current hosting company who are using previous generation technology. So we are going to be moving to a new server soon with SSD technology and a greater integration of our board's software in the architecture.
> 
> ...


Good luck with the migration. I have learned with such undertakings to count upon mr. Murphy and his law to pay a visit.
If I mis a post or 2 I won't be bothered.

I Wish everyone involved well with it!


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## tack (Apr 26, 2017)

Silence-is-Golden said:


> impressive....... you are also good with the IT stuff Tack?


Well, I wouldn't say _also_. Based on the wasteland of discarded and mediocre musical ideas, I couldn't possibly use the word _good_ in the context of me and composing.

But yeah, big infrastructure stuff is what I do to fund expensive hobbies such as this one. ("Big" is admittedly relative.)



Frederick Russ said:


> Currently, less than 3% are covering 95% of the forum costs. I cover the rest.


If there was more transparency with costs and revenue, I suspect more forum members would be willing to chip in.


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## heisenberg (Apr 26, 2017)

tack said:


> Ideally you'd lower the DNS TTL in advance of the migration. Something even as low as 30 seconds isn't unheard of.



I use TTL, Time to Live, setting adjustments quite regularly when migrating servers. 30 seconds is a bit harsh. Cloud server DNS apps I use have various time defaults that go down as low as 5 minutes which when you think about it is appropriate from a practical perspective. When you think about DNS propagation you want to strike a balance between correcting mistakes quickly and not hammering DNS servers all over the world with frequent changes.

Hopefully the DNS tables aren't terribly complicated. Bon chance with the move.


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## tack (Apr 26, 2017)

heisenberg said:


> 30 seconds is a bit harsh.


30 seconds is standard for my services. We use DNS as first tier load balancing. It's a surprisingly effective way to move around large connection volumes (40-50M concurrent connections, say), especially for failovers. From that perspective, 5 minutes would be intolerably slow. Of course, it does require solid authoritative DNS infrastructure.

But I suppose it depends what you're doing. If the plan is to take the hit on downtime to do an offline migration where moving data around is going to take hours anyway, DNS TTL is kind of a pointless micro-optimization.


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## mc_deli (Apr 26, 2017)

tack said:


> Well, I wouldn't say _also_. Based on the wasteland of discarded and mediocre musical ideas, I couldn't possibly use the word _good_ in the context of me and composing.
> But yeah, big infrastructure stuff is what I do to fund expensive hobbies such as this one. ("Big" is admittedly relative.)
> If there was more transparency with costs and revenue, I suspect more forum members would be willing to chip in.


There's never a good time for this... the combination of lack of transparency, lack of moderation, weird promo email service offers, and the idea that ad rates are artificially low (mentioned with the last fundraiser) are stopping me from donating again. And the forum is not slow for me. GS is slow. VIc is fast.

When you have such a compact (easy to reach) pool of advertisers, combined with a core membership that are spending (easy to click), with all the possibilities that ad serving and affiliate sales offer (easy to %€)... I am very surprised you can't make VIc pay for itself. I am though happy for you to do it your way


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## heisenberg (Apr 26, 2017)

tack said:


> 30 seconds is standard for my services. We use DNS as first tier load balancing. It's a surprisingly effective way to move around large connection volumes (40-50M concurrent connections, say), especially for failovers. From that perspective, 5 minutes would be intolerably slow.



Makes sense for complicated load balancing scenarios. I was thinking about a webserver and a single DB. Anyway, point both of us were making is it is an incredibly simple and useful tool.


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## reddognoyz (Apr 26, 2017)

Don't let 'em grind you down Fred. You do what you gotta, and I will continue to contribute because I get a lot out of this forum.


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## Nick Batzdorf (May 1, 2017)

Speaking of lack of moderation, I'll be immoderate and post the donation link here just in case anyone feels like it's a worthwhile resource.

I do.

http://vi-control.net/community/donations/


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