WWW-25 Server Replacement – 9 and 10 January

We are kicking off the new year with some sever hardware upgrades! First item of business is the replacement of Linux server WWW-25; our faithful servant for the past 3.5 years. The upgrade ensures continued reliability of our service and adds more hosting capacity. Site migration is scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

We will migrate all services (websites, databases, and email) over to the new server in blocks of IP addresses. There may be some interruption of service; we apologise for any inconvenience this my cause. Rest assured that we will take utmost care to ensure everything works perfectly after the migration.

The name of the new server is WWW-28; you will notice this name in the SSL certificate when you visit cPanel and Webmail. We are migrating the sub-networks to the new server as well. IP addresses will thus remain unchanged. You therefore do not need to make any changes to your email, FTP or SSH settings. However, if you have a browser bookmark for cPanel or Webmail that uses the server name, you will need to update it with the new server name.

EXCEPTION: Websites on the IP address 67.228.180.172 will see a change to a new IP address 67.228.181.224 on the new server. This is because the old IP address is bound to the main network interface of the old server and cannot be re-assigned.

Maintenance window:
We are grouping the transfers in blocks of IP addresses. With the  majority of the sites on the server belonging to South African clients, we will perform the migration during the South African night time.

Friday Group:
Sites with IP addresses starting with:
174.36.*
174.37.*
208.43.*

Friday 21:00 to Saturday 06:00 SAST
Friday 19:00 to Saturday 04:00 GMT
Friday 14:00 to 23:00 EDT
Friday 11:00 to 20:00 PDT

Saturday Group:
Sites with IP addresses starting with:
67.228.180.*  (about 2/3 of all website on this server)
67.228.244.*

Saturday 18:00 to Sunday 06:00 SAST
Saturday 16:00 to Sunday 04:00 GMT
Saturday 05:00 to 23:00 EDT
Saturday 8:00 to 20:00 PDT

Update Friday 17:55
Finished the final preparations. Migration to start in just over an hour.

Update Friday 18:09
Migration of IP range 174.36.* in progress.

Update Friday 20:35
Migration of IP range 174.36.* completed. Awaiting subnet reassignment.
Starting migration of sites on 174.37.* IP range.

Update Friday 22:30
Subnet re-assignments completed for 174.36.* and 174.37.* IP ranges.
Starting migration of sites on 208.43.* IP range.

Update Friday 23:00 GMT
Sit migration and subnet re-assignment of 208.43.* complete.
This concludes the migration steps for today. If you detect any problems, please submit a support ticket.

Update Saturday 17:40 GMT
Resumed migration. Current working on a batch of accounts in the IP address 67.228.180.172 (there are many).

Update Saturday 19:05 GMT
We have completed migration of most of the church websites we host (Web4Christ and NG). Migration of other accounts on 67.228.180.172 is in progress.

Update Saturday 20:35 GMT
Processing the last few account on 67.228.180.172.

Update Saturday 23:00 GMT
Completed migration of accounts on 67.228.180.172.
Started migration of 67.228.244.* subnet. Not many websites, but some very complex ones. This will take a while.

Update Sunday 01:20 GMT
We have migrated most of the websites on the 67.228.244.* subnet. We are currently awaiting the re-assignment of the subnet to the new server. Websites on the subnet will be temporarily inaccessible.

Update Sunday 02:20 GMT
The subnet 67.228.244.* has been re-assigned. Performing the last few batch of site transfer now.

Update Sunday 05:50 GMT
Migration has been completed successfully. Please let us know if you see any problems.
A single large account is still in progress; we are in contact with the owner.