9/14/06 Maintenance Alert - Network Upgrades

Wireless

We will be upgrading network components during the Thursday night 9/14/06 Thursday maintenance window (11:00pm to 04:00am PDT). There will be a period in which the entire SmugMug site will be unavailable.

Specifically, we will be removing our old Load Balancer and replacing it with a new solution. While we believe this will take a minimal amount of downtime to cut over, we may need several attempts to ensure success.

I will make updates to this thread when we start and finish. This outage should not impact DGrin.

Thanks for your patience, and sorry in advance for any inconvenience.

RKeaton

Wireless wrote:

We will be upgrading network components during the Thursday night 9/14/06 Thursday maintenance window (11:00pm to 04:00am PDT). There will be a period in which the entire SmugMug site will be unavailable.

Specifically, we will be removing our old Load Balancer and replacing it with a new solution. While we believe this will take a minimal amount of downtime to cut over, we may need several attempts to ensure success.

I will make updates to this thread when we start and finish. This outage should not impact DGrin.

Thanks for your patience, and sorry in advance for any inconvenience.

Hey, now that wasn't so hard, was it??? : : :

ballentphoto

Wireless wrote:

We will be upgrading network components during the Thursday night 9/14/06 Thursday maintenance window (11:00pm to 04:00am PDT). There will be a period in which the entire SmugMug site will be unavailable.

Specifically, we will be removing our old Load Balancer and replacing it with a new solution. While we believe this will take a minimal amount of downtime to cut over, we may need several attempts to ensure success.

I will make updates to this thread when we start and finish. This outage should not impact DGrin.

Thanks for your patience, and sorry in advance for any inconvenience.

Now that is what I am talking about. A little heads up Still would prefer the e-mail but this is certainly much better

Andy

ballentphoto wrote:

Now that is what I am talking about. A little heads up Still would prefer the e-mail but this is certainly much better

Also see your SmugMug messages, in your control panel

sirsloop

one step in the right direction... emails?

RKeaton

Yes, I saw it in my Control Panel...that's why I was commenting. Thanks for the heads up.

scwalter

Andy wrote:

Also see your SmugMug messages, in your control panel

Cool. Thanks.

Thusie

Saw the message first thing this (control panel) AM!!! Nice going to the Smugmug crewthumb

dogwood

cool

Andy wrote:

Also see your SmugMug messages, in your control panel

Just saw this message in my control panel and sure do appreciate the head's up. I love the way SM actually listens to us! Thank you.

Andy

Bump

photogmomma

Thank you SOOO much for adding this new feature!!! (Letting us know what's going on, that is!)

Wow... A company that actually listens to the users/customers. Imagine that!

Andy

Bump

DJKennedy

A email would be great, but I can see how that may not be a desirable thing in the eyes of the Smugmug owners (increase cost/time?) - a message in the control panel may go by un noticed...

but...

I DID see it, and I was happy that we got a message warning us of any disruption of service even temperarely (yes I know, I cant spell to save my live).

Thanks Smugmug - as mentioned, it's a step forward. It's little things like this that help make Smugmug a better choice - actaully listening to its customers, and even implementing ideas/suggestions from us (ok, not ME, but 'us' in general).

Having that warning allows me a chance to place a warning on my site to let people know that there will be a disruption, and it saves ME from having a heart attack wondering what's happening.

Derek

Zotz

Load balancer

Wireless wrote:

Specifically, we will be removing our old Load Balancer and replacing it with a new solution.

If you don't mind the question, what load balancer(s) are you retiring and which are you installing? Our LANs and WAN are built with hundreds of Cisco boxes, but Foundry boxes do the SLB in our data centers.

Just curious...

Rick -Z-

Andy

Bump

Andy

Bump

Andy

Bump

Wireless

Maintenance begins!
Here we go folks.

I'll update here when I'm done.

Pezpix

Aaaaaaaaargh! I was two seconds away from saving my script when it locked out. The horror!

That does it, no cookie for you wireless

ballentphoto

Wireless wrote:

Here we go folks.

I'll update here when I'm done.

Johnny on the spot... right at 11pm good luck

BeachBill

Wireless wrote:

I will make updates to this thread when we start and finish. This outage should not impact DGrin.

Oops! It looks like it did have an effect on dgrin for a few minutes. Something about the database being unavailable... Glad it's back now... I was having withdrawal issues...

jmpsmash

BeachBill wrote:

Oops! It looks like it did have an effect on dgrin for a few minutes. Something about the database being unavailable... Glad it's back now... I was having withdrawal issues...

i was able to get to my page for 5 secs. then i got a maintainance in progress message... tick.. tick.. tick..

lynnesite

Well it is locked down tight now. Figures that I'd do some stuff I'd procrastinated on, and now that the edits are made I'm racing to shove the stuff up to the site. 1:18 and still down. I yield.

Pezpix

Oh alright, I guess it would be cruel for you to do your work on an empty stomach. Here, have a cookie

jmpsmash

OMG. have they finished the upgrade?

ivar

jmpsmash wrote:

OMG. have they finished the upgrade?

Hi JPM, we are still working on it. As soon as we are finished, information will be posted here!

jz_berkowitz

please email
Really need to email these things... I just spent an hour copying my photos to a computer in an internet cafe (they had some USB issues I had to deal with) only to find out I cant upload, and then waited some time. Its been longer than an hour, can't upload, and I have to get moving.

As I am a new user I am sure that I am not accustomed to past difficulties, but in the name of people who use this as a way to manage photos while they travel, please email ahead of time.

ivar

jz_berkowitz wrote:

Really need to email these things... I just spent an hour copying my photos to a computer in an internet cafe (they had some USB issues I had to deal with) only to find out I cant upload, and then waited some time. Its been longer than an hour, can't upload, and I have to get moving.

As I am a new user I am sure that I am not accustomed to past difficulties, but in the name of people who use this as a way to manage photos while they travel, please email ahead of time.

Hi JZ, and welcome to dgrin!

I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience! Notification had been put up here on dgrin, and in your control panel. We are looking into other ways of notification aswell.

Wireless

Update
We had some, uh, networking fubars during the process (amazingly not related to the new load balancers, which appear to be smoking fast right now). Unfortunately those incredibly dense pieces of hardware that sit right in between the keyboard and chair don't always transfer commands correctly.

We think things are back, but keep in mind we're still in maintenance window, and reserve the right to shut down again if we need to adjust/fix/etc. I'll post an all clear once we believe everything is stable and happy.

jmpsmash

ivar wrote:

Hi JZ, and welcome to dgrin!

I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience! Notification had been put up here on dgrin, and in your control panel. We are looking into other ways of notification aswell.

the control panel thing is nice. but i think most users will prefer email. most other services notify via email anyway.

also, not every one logs into their smugmug account everyday (they should! )

jmpsmash

Wireless wrote:

We had some, uh, networking fubars during the process (amazingly not related to the new load balancers, which appear to be smoking fast right now).

sweet. uploading my pics now.