We have completed a MySQL Server upgrade on Sunday morning. Please see the postscript for notes on connecting to your databases.
Background
The server does many things at the same time (email, websites, databases) and does this quite well. The load on this server has gradually been increasing every month. In recent weeks it has struggled at certain times of the day, to a point that we had two outages in as many weeks.
To reduce the load on the server, we are are splitting the MySQL service off to a new server. This will dramatically increase the capacity to serve databases and reduce the load on this server. We have scheduled a six-hour maintenance window to perform this work. During the maintenance window, access to the MySQL Server will be unavailable:
- Websites that run WordPress, Joomla and any other system that requires access to MySQL will display a connection error.
- Other website will run just fine.
- Email will flow as normal.
What you need to do
Nothing. We are taking care of everything. Relax, get a coffee, beer, or get some sleep :)
Maintenance window
Sunday 00:01 to 06:00 SAST
Saturday 22:01 to Sunday 04:00 UTC
Saturday 11:01 to 17:00 EDT
Saturday 14:01 to 20:00 PST
We will post updates on this page.
Update 22:00 UTC
We are commencing work. The MySQL Server will go offline shortly.
Update 01:00 UTC
We are just about done. The MySQL service has been back online for a while now, and we are just performing last checks for monitoring and stability.
Update 01:55 UTC
Al done!
Update 07:58 UTC
We are aware that some website are showing connection errors, and working on the problem.
Update 08:15 UTC
Snag with database permission corrected. All should work fine now. We continue to monitor for errors.
Postscript
The new MySQL Server is accessible on the internal domain name sql-31.local. We are using MySQL Router to accept and seamlessly route connections made to localhost to sql-31.local. This means you can use any of the following database hosts to connect to your databases:
- localhost (as before)
- sql-31.local (as cPanel may suggest)
You will notice automatic entries in cPanel on the Remote SQL page for the web server www-30.local. This is essential to allow connections to the new MySQL Server; do not remove them.