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Server Migration Complete

Forums: General Discussion
Created on: 10/12/13 12:40 PM Views: 1258 Replies: 20
Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 12:40 PM

On Oct. 12th we completed a significant upgrade including moving to new server hardware, new underlying operating software, and a new IT team. Everything went well.

A couple of things:

1) During a portion of the maintenance window all class sites were live. We hadn't anticipated this. No harm -- what this means is during that time many features on the site could be used just fine. Several features such as Email the Class were down and couldn't be used. All site features are now operational.

2) We are experiencing an issue with email queuing pertaining to the upgrade. From a user's perspective everything appears to be working and emails appear to be going out, but are actually going into an email queue rather than being truly sent. We have a new IT team (an extremely capable one I might add) working on it now. Resolution expected later today. All emails sent will ultimately be received -- albeit late. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Again this should be resolved shortly.

All things considered we're very pleased with the upgrade. As we are on new software and hardware now it's possible you may spot a bug somewhere in the system we weren't expecting. If you see anything out of the ordinary please click the Contact link at the top of our web site and let us know. We have people monitoring the new setup throughout the weekend and are prepared to immediately address any issues that may surface.

Thanks everyone for your patience during the upgrade and for being long-term supporters. I must tell you -- I am super exited to be on all this new hardware and software! So pleased. This is a big leap forward for Class Creator.


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 12:50 PM - Response #1

Where's that "Like" button when you need it? javascript:addSmiley('Very Happy');

How long are you and the crew going to be running on coffee and cat naps before you get some well deserved sleep?

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 1:08 PM - Response #2

Hello!

Well, I wish all my pages were loading correctly but they are not. They look like they are partly loading. No navigation boxes. Have to use back arrow to get out.

The content is all clustered together. Hope this is fixed soon.

Richard

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 1:36 PM - Response #3

Congrats - all looks well from my (user) end. Server migration, hardware & software updates are always difficult, so Kudos to you, your staff and your new IT Team. Maybe at some point you could write an email indicating the changes - some of us are interested in those sorts of things - also, it sounds like you changed server vendors??? Thanks for your efforts - try to get some rest.

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 1:55 PM - Response #4

I think you are correct Joe. New server is in Colorado vs Texas before.

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 2:26 PM - Response #5

I posted under Bugs, but be careful using the CC editor for a bit. It will remove all script tags and say they are invalid. This will turn any page that uses scripts pretty much into junk.Rolling Eyes

I suggest avoiding any editing changes for now just in case other changes were also made.

How a migration would change the editor setup/code is very odd thoughQuestion.

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Edited 10/12/13 2:27 PM
Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 2:38 PM - Response #6

I'm not seeing anything out of the ordinary. Can you try clearing your cache and reloading your pages? If you're still seeing a problem anywhere can you take a screenshot of the specific page?

Richard Ray Williams wrote:

Hello!

Well, I wish all my pages were loading correctly but they are not. They look like they are partly loading. No navigation boxes. Have to use back arrow to get out.

The content is all clustered together. Hope this is fixed soon.

Richard


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 2:58 PM - Response #7

Thanks Joe. Smile

It would be a rather lengthy list. A litany of changes were necessary not just for the stability of the current system, but for the growth of where we're expecting to go with this next (Facebook app and other things).

We have a bank of servers that we own running at a huge data center. The servers are unmanaged at the Data Center. We maintain the servers via Remote Desktop. The 5 servers we have there work in tandem with the Amazon cloud (in developerland called S3) to run the entire Class Creator system.

We've always been big on Adobe products. We migrated from Cold Fusion 9 last night to Cold Fusion 10. Cold Fusion 10 is 30% faster than Cold Fusion 9. It also has a new underlying engine called Tomcat.

Our lead server last night (which we call Cold Fusion Main internally) was replaced with brand new hardware, all brand new drives, new memory, new firewall and so forth. The specs on the thing are ridiculous. You could basically fly it around. This new lead server should offer considerable improved stability.

I wasn't pleased with the IT scenario at Class Creator recently. We're not IT people ourselves - we're a team of designers and programmers. This was unfortunately evident in the reliability of the system in general recently. I went seeking an entire new team of IT experts and I found exactly what I was looking for. I transitioned the authority for our entire IT setup to them -- pulling the plug on everything we had set up to date. The IT situation had become unacceptable and a change was absolutely required. We worked with this new team for the past 5 months to make last night possible. I am delighted with the new team and the relationship we have formed with them. From here forward when there are IT issues we have very capable people right there to solve them. As you of course can imagine a system like this needs considerable IT tweaking regularly.

So that's -- in a nutshell -- what we were doing last night.

By the way I just got word from the new IT team that the email queue issue reported earlier is now resolved. Smile Yay. You see, this is the type of responsiveness we are going to expect from now on. My Dad once told me a great quote and I've always remembered it: "Find the best man for the job and get out of his way." That's exactly what we did here. We won't ask our IT people to design or program anything -- and they won't ask us to put together sophisticated IT configurations. Smile We'll all stick to what we're best at. We now have the right people in place on the right jobs.

The only evidence people should see regarding any of this is things working properly.

Joe Kmoch wrote:

Congrats - all looks well from my (user) end. Server migration, hardware & software updates are always difficult, so Kudos to you, your staff and your new IT Team. Maybe at some point you could write an email indicating the changes - some of us are interested in those sorts of things - also, it sounds like you changed server vendors??? Thanks for your efforts - try to get some rest.


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 3:00 PM - Response #8

Yes, I completely agree. Wasn't expecting that, nor would there be any [logical] reason for it. We made very few actual code changes last night. Most of this was IT and hardware stuff. Although the software upgrade itself could potentially have issues with scripting you've added? That's my best guess.

Can you possibly do me a favor and Jing the issue? Either that or at least take a screenshot of what you're seeing. I'll turn this over to Programming but I need to understand exactly what's happening first. Thanks Jack.

Jack Vermeulen wrote:

I posted under Bugs, but be careful using the CC editor for a bit. It will remove all script tags and say they are invalid. This will turn any page that uses scripts pretty much into junk.Rolling Eyes

I suggest avoiding any editing changes for now just in case other changes were also made.

How a migration would change the editor setup/code is very odd thoughQuestion.


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 3:35 PM - Response #9

Thanks for the details Brad. Us geeks appreciate it.

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 4:04 PM - Response #10

Brad,
If I remember my computer history correctly (Which I never took), now you know what it felt like when that first computer communicated to or from Stanford University to another university and typed in "L-O-G-I...". That means "I think you did a hell of a job" and you should be proud and gloating. You deserve it. You all do.
Barbara

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 4:17 PM - Response #11

Brad Switzer wrote:

Can you possibly do me a favor and Jing the issue? Either that or at least take a screenshot of what you're seeing. I'll turn this over to Programming but I need to understand exactly what's happening first. Thanks Jack.

Just see THIS page. One of the admins added a space, saved and then got what you see. If you look at the source it replaces script with "InvalidTag".

If I use a backup copy, it just saves it exactly the same way. You can see that the backups work fine.

------------------

A related but different topic. The way backups are "restored" is not exactly how backups are normally done (for example how CC itself would use a 'backup').

Current method puts content back into the editor and then one has to save. There needs to be an option to literally make the backup the current copy without going through the editor. That would avoid the current problemIdea

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 5:16 PM - Response #12

How interesting. Confirmed what you just stated. In hands of Programming.


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 5:46 PM - Response #13

1. I have lost my Playlists on each page. Tried uploading new, still will not play.

2. Lost many of the jpg & gif images on some of the pages, not all of them.

3. Tried to upload new images, can not upload any images at this time - on any pages.

Is anyone else experiencing these problems?

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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 6:04 PM - Response #14

Image and Playlist issues are known. Working to resolve now.


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Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 7:34 PM - Response #15

BRAD; how come you are using MY CAT as an engine his name is TOMCAT


Quote:

new underlying engine called Tomcat
.

Very Happy Rolling Eyes Very Happy

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Edited 10/12/13 7:41 PM
Saturday, October 12, 2013 at 7:43 PM - Response #16

BRAD what happened to your pictureQuestion

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Sunday, October 13, 2013 at 12:07 AM - Response #17

Working on resolving several reported issues currently. Marked restoring my own photo low priority. Smile


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Sunday, October 13, 2013 at 1:39 AM - Response #18

First off, let me say "Congratulations" on completing what must have been a monumental job. I do, however, seem to be experiencing some problems on my Home Page. I use a scrolling message type banner at the top of the page from the FlashVortex website that says "Happy Birthday, so-and-so" to give Classmates a shout-out on their birthday. This updated (with the Classmates celebrating birthdays today) banner is no longer appearing on the page when it's displayed. Interestingly, though, another FlashVortex banner with a generic "Welcome to the website" message that never changes and can be seen the page someone would see before they log in does appear just fine.
I also upload football programs and other publications from 50 years ago to the "Issuu" website and then embed the HTML code on the Home Page. The newest one that I posted about midnight tonight is not being displayed. Past ones that I uploaded (embedded) previously on pages in the Navigation Panel are still being displayed just fine. So, somehow, these only seems to be problems with newly embedded items.

Hope this makes sense and that it's only a temporary bug.

Don Weber
Start High School Class of '66

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Sunday, October 13, 2013 at 2:00 AM - Response #19

Thanks Don. As both of these issues pertain to third party code (likely it's some type of embedding incompatibility with our new underlying software) I'm going to ask you to hold off on this for just a moment. First we need to tackle reported issues pertaining to the system itself.

We're working on a variety of reported issues right now which may or may not clear up your two issues above. If you're still seeing this on Monday evening please do me a favor and click on our Contact link at the top of the page and re-report the issues. If you report it that way Monday I'll pop it over to Programming and have them investigate.


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Edited 10/13/13 2:01 AM
Monday, October 14, 2013 at 7:37 AM - Response #20

Hi, Brad,

Thank you for the quick response! Everything's back to normal now on the website...all third-party items are displaying just fine. The only minor problem I'm seeing right now is something that only an administrator would see, namely the "Last save" clock underneath the editing window is an hour behind. (At least in the Eastern Time Zone it is, since I'm only about an hour due south of you in Sylvania, OH.)

You guys are the best!

Thanks again,
Don

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Edited 10/14/13 7:50 AM
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