Data Center Move Goes Awry for TypePad 104
miller60 writes "Problems during a switchover between data centers have slowed TypePad, the popular blog hosting service. Typepad maxed out its data center space and all available power at Internap, and is in the process of moving to a new data center. The transition has not gone smoothly, causing the Typepad service to slow to a crawl amid very public complaints by its blogger customers. TypePad operator Six Apart promises things will improve soon."
Heh, I did that. Twice (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Get all your DNS updates ready.
2. Shut everything down all at once at your low peak use time.
3. Submit your DNS changes (or move your own dns servers in advance to new location).
4. As fast as you can pile servers, routers, firewalls, switches, etc into vans, trucks, etc.
5. Drive at 80 miles an hour to new data center hoping to fuck that pot hole you just hit didn't fuckup some scsi drives.
6. As fast as you can unload all servers and re-set up your system.
7. Spend about 24-48 hours fixing shit.
8. Get drunk.
I'm not kidding. I did this twice with more than 100 servers.
Re:Heh, I did that. Twice (Score:3, Interesting)
They shouldnt have left Internap (Score:1, Interesting)
Kyler
Six Apart?? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want to sound like a troll post. Sadly, there may be no other way to actually make sense with my question. We're talking about the same Six Apart that consistently gets in the way of free speech, suspends accounts, paid or not, for the absolute most whimsical reason, and the very same Six apart that will delete your community if it doesn't serve their consumerist policy? (like my LJ community DIERIAA {legal links to music offered freely for public download on the net by the record labels/copyright owners themselves} was terminated for no reason, never even had it's first post made, it just got wiped out, just for it's name.)
We're talking about THAT Six Apart, right? The one that doesn't give half a shit about you, as long as they can steal your money Six Apart? Thank the deities that I never paid for one of their accounts. I've said worse on my webpages and not once has the Secret Service complained, not until Six Apart took over LiveJournal, that is.
I apologize for this seeming like a troll post. I've had my own horrible experiences with LJ/SA, and for once, I had a chance to vent out my frustrations, and let it be known what I see LJ/SA to be. This is a personal opinion, so if you are in possession of better experiences, let them be known and put me into my place, please. But I still wish to know.. Improve? What are they going to improve upon, their volunteer idiots to ban and suspend journals or communities without even following their own set policies? Surely you're joking.
Re:Heh, I did that. Twice (Score:5, Interesting)
Squeeze as many virtual hosts onto as few boxes as possible.
Move the cleared off boxes to the new datacenter, get them up and running, with a ton of IPs
Move swaths of virtualhosts and users at a time --
update DNS to point to the new box, create www2.domain pointing to the new box
update old box virtualhost with a 301 redirect of everything to www2.domain
All traffic moves to the new NOC, all that remains are redirects for a few hours while dns caches around the world updating.
Great method for moving hundreds of MB/sec of traffic in no time.
Happens all the time in pr0n hosting biz (Score:4, Interesting)
Legitimate data centres around Europe don't let anyone take out machines until everyone agrees all bills have been paid. It limits the damage from pr0n websites pulling this stunt. The courts had seized all their bank accounts and given the money over to the data centre, the ISPs, and all the rest of their creditors. They actually had quite a large stash of money, but the boss was a big time cheat who just didn't like paying bills. Once their bills had been paid, they were told they had 24 hours to clear out their operation.
It was a disaster, of course. Their DNS $TTL was a week, they had all kinds of affiliate programs who broke for a while. The new data centre was an old office building in a dodgy office park, so it didn't yet have the cooling for 3000 servers or a redundant electricity supply. There was a single fibre connection passing nearby, and I had to find 200 metres of monomode to get fused and in operation in a matter of hours. While I set up their new data centre routers and switches, they hired a bunch of students to load up a couple of moving vans starting at midnight. Piles and piles of cheap, crappy DIY servers, and two huge cardboard boxes of cables. Then they drove 230 Kms, arriving at 7:00 AM, and started setting things back up. By noon, they had only 150 servers back up and running.
I think they had over 50% machine failure and it took them 2 or 3 days just to install the 2500+ machines in the new area. They did lose most of their customers, but wrote it off as normal churn in the pr0n hosting biz.
the AC
Re:Six Apart?? (Score:1, Interesting)
Slashdot effect is grossly overrated (Score:2, Interesting)
Whooopie.
It this case the problem is a lack of capacity (even though the link is directed at the problem), but I doubt Slashdot's herding compares with the continual massive herding in the blog sphere.
Re:Heh, I did that. Twice (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Heh, I did that. Twice (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, if you were exceptionally clever, you would have used Dan Bernstein's tinydns and its time-to-die / timestamp support to just schedule when the DNS switch would happen, and it would magically take care of adjusting the TTL appropriately so the switchover occured at the second specified.
Mmmm, tinydns....
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lds