U13/Puttynuts will be doing massive amounts of server maintenance

[FliesLikeABrick]

-- The maintenance will be beginning on Friday at 5PM CST --


I will be doing large amounts of maintenance on almost every server I use for hosting.

This will impact:
- All e-mail hosted by U13/Puttynuts
- All websites hosted by U13/Puttynuts except those hosted on wizard.u13.net, the server that hosts soldat.pl and forums.soldat.pl
- The Soldat Lobby server will be down as it is hosted on one of the Puttynuts machines still.
- All DNS hosted by Puttynuts, though this should be minimal as no more than two of the three DNS servers will be down at once
- Custom apps/servers hosted by Puttynuts
- U13/Puttynuts hosted soldat servers and teamspeak.

These will not all go down at once, maintenance will be performed on one server at a time so that services are down for as little time as possible.

The reason for this:
One of my servers is having hardware failure.  I am replacing it with a server in Chicago.  I am taking this time to standardize all of my servers to make maintenance easier and allow me to more easily secure my hosted services and offer new things more easily in the future. 

I'd love to answer any questions about the maintenance itself, reasons for it, or service distruptions.

When?

I don't know yet, probably next weekend.  I will update when I know.


What will be done?
My primary DNS server will be migrated to Chicago, right now it is in Albany.  This is to replace the machine with failing hardware and to reduce my costs.

My mail server will be moved to Chicago, it is the same machine as my DNS master.

All web hosting will be moved to one server.  All web hosting will go through a reverse proxy to facilitate the use of different webservers and enable caching for better performance when needed or requested by customers.

A dedicated database server will be easier to use in the new setup, this will increase performance and reduce maintenance needed by a lot.

I will be separating some of my internal shares and databases from hosted customers for more security and better management

I will be relocating my VPN to Chicago to increase performance between my servers and have better throughput on the VPN in general

I will be putting all 5 servers on a private gigabit network for internal communication for much better performance and security

Questions?

[iDante]

will this lower the price of any of your services?

[FliesLikeABrick]

will this lower the price of any of your services?

no, my prices are already as low as I can make them.  This will make it easier to provide good service and good servers... so I guess it is giving you more for your money (in effect lowering the price, I guess)

[Shadow G-Unit]

At first I thought it said Pussynuts...that's just me. Anyways, hopefully this still keeps u13 smexy.

[Crimson Goth]

No news on the stats? Oh and my server is like way at the bottum of the lobby even after the ping is sorted...wierd.

[FliesLikeABrick]

No news on the stats? Oh and my server is like way at the bottum of the lobby even after the ping is sorted...wierd.

is your server hosted by u13, or are you just talking about your server in the lobby?

[LtKillroy]

Goth its been like that since I can remember. So more stable servers, that's always good. Plus Chicago is closer to me than Albany.

[SpiltCoffee]

FLAB, what ISP are your servers with? Because, for some reason, the lobby detects my servers as being in Taiwan, even though they are located in Australia.

[FliesLikeABrick]

FLAB, what ISP are your servers with? Because, for some reason, the lobby detects my servers as being in Taiwan, even though they are located in Australia.

That has nothing to do with my ISP, but has everything to do with the quality of the ip-to-country database I use.  It is about 95% accurate, so yeah... there are some exceptions.  I really don't like correcting them by hand because otherwise I need to keep track of the changes and re-do them every time I update the database.  I will look into making a system that allows easier changes to be made, but don't get your hopes up.

In any case, all of my servers are hosted on an XO Communications network in downtown Chicago

[SpiltCoffee]

kk. Well, I hope you're able to fix it, since I'm getting a lot of people with pings above 300, but no one from Australia coming into my servers. D:

[excruciator]

If I remembered right, U13 was the most popular NA server. DM, CTF, INF are usually full.
But now after numerous downtime and maintainance, Fracs is in control of the most popular server. Not because its great or anything, because is there.

I guess it is really hard to met the minimum requirement.

[FliesLikeABrick]

Yep, the server issues I've been having are a reason for this maintenance.  I'm going to do a more standard installation across all of my servers so that I can maintain everything much more easily and get Soldat servers to run better

[FliesLikeABrick]

The maintenance is scheduled to begin at 5PM central this Friday.

[Laser Guy]

Good... I'l be flying to USA at the time so I won't be able to play anyway.

[FliesLikeABrick]

just a reminder that this is going on tonight.  I am about 25% done.  The lobby has just gone down and will continue to stay down for at least a few hours.  Most u13/puttynuts hosting services should be back up by some time tomorrow

[Shadow G-Unit]

What exactly is Puttynuts?

[$niper]

Any rough idea on when it will be up and running again?

[hyrr]

What exactly is Puttynuts?

Name of the server.

[jrgp]

What exactly is Puttynuts?

Name of the server.

Wrong.

It is the name of FliesLikeABrick's company which offers Soldat Server Hosting, Web Hosting, DNS Hosting, and more.

[Chariot]

wow what a stupid name for a company