UtaForum Status Update/Server Upgrade

As the servers are down at the moment I figured I would post the update here, then make a news post about it later when the boards are back up.

As many of you have noticed UtaForum has been suffering from performance issues. The reason for these slowdowns was because there simply wasn’t enough resources to go around. The board has grown a lot since we launched UtaForum 3.0 so so this day was bound to come.

Right now UtaForum 3.5 is averaging over 5,000 unique visitors a month and more than 40,000 pageviews, over the course of some 14,000 user sessions. Needless to say we have outgrown my humble server setup and it has come for a major server upgrade.

Server Upgrade
To address we are going to upgrade the servers. Where before we managed with 512MB or RAM I am going to triple the memory capacity to some 1.5GB. Likewise to solve the issue with the database being slow all our storage will be moved to Solid State Drives. We will have less overall capacity, but I/O and database response times should increase dramatically.

No, I am not going to do a ‘donate or die’ campaign like a certain other site did. I am student as well but if you didn’t already know I am also a professional web developer and do many projects on the side. I recently got paid for a job I completed and I am going to use those funds to fuel our upgrade. So no, we don’t have to do any donation runs or anything sillylike that.

My other clients pay for our webserver so you don’t have to. Which is fitting since I host my professional work on the same VPS so I get to write off this entire upgrade as a business expense. That being said if you want to pay me back, simply continue being awesome, that is reward enough in itself. (though I wouldn’t say no to Otakune Weeaboo fanart)

Estimated Timeline
First things first: Before I can do any upgrades the first major step will be backups. In case anything goes wrong in the upgrade process we will always have backups to fall back on. Through the course of tonight and tomorrow the server may go up and down as services are frozen and backups are made.

Come Thursday/Friday we will make the hardware transition. This transition process should not take more than 3-4 hours before service is restored but we might change IP addresses during the transition and it may take anywhere from 6 to 24 hours for the new DNS to propagate. If there are any complications here I will post another update.

If the IP changes, new server is up for others, but you can’t seem to be able to connect you may need to flush your DNS cache. To double check the server status use DownForEveryoneOrJustMe and if the server is up but you can’t load then it is most likely a DNS related issue. You will need to clear your DNS cache (flushing) and can find detailed instructions on DNS flushing for Windows/Mac/Linux here.
 

MystSaphyr

Procrastinator Extraordinaire
Administrator
Defender of Defoko
Looks like we're still having some errors with profile pages and nav buttons. We'll get this sorted out soon >_< Sorry for all the trouble...!
 

Hentai

Technical Admin
Administrator
Supporter
Defender of Defoko
Thread starter
If you are reading this then your DNS has successfully updated and you are now using the new server! Performance should be improved all-around but if you run into any new errors please report them.

Otherwise, I am gonna see about fixing the top navigation.
 

Ant

Teto's Territory
Defender of Defoko
Wow, it's incredibly fast! I'm really loving this. Awesome job. ^^)b
 

MystSaphyr

Procrastinator Extraordinaire
Administrator
Defender of Defoko
Just letting everyone know that I do have access to the Cpanel now, and if Hentai isn't online and the tables break, yell at me on Skype, Tumblr and/or Twitter and I'll go repair them! I can't handle anything server-wise but I can definitely help repair the actual board now.