We're planning on doing maintenance on our hardware/server setup which has a large impact on our services availability, everything will be down while performing it
We're not exactly sure on the time and date of the maintenance, but we're planning on doing it this weekend.
We'll be taking a trip down to the datacenter and perform the following tasks;
MrWhite:
- Apply BIOS updates
-- Reconfigure BIOS settings
- Remove RAID setup
-- Remove 3rd SAS disk from machine
-- Re-install/update VMware ESXi
-- Restore guest OS backups
-- Reconfigure backup facilities
The main reasons for the maintenance is because we are experiencing some performance issues in regard to the hard drive setup on that machine. If one guest OS uses a lot of disk activity, the other OS gets to perform real slow. By removing the RAID setup and assigning the guest OS each to their own disk this behavior will be prevented. Both MrWhite(Linux) and MrGreen(Windows) will run of their own 15.000RPM SAS drive. By removing the RAID setup we can use the 3rd disk to be placed in the other machine to provide extra backup storage. Due to the large backup and restore operations we expect the servers to be down the majority of the day.
Services effected: Websites (frontpage, forums, HLstatsX, wiki etc etc), IRC bouncers, Mumble, HLstatsX(log catcher), SpA points, Minecraft, mail environment etc.
MrBlonde:
- Troubleshoot memory problems
- Update BIOS
-- Reconfigure BIOS if required
- Place spare SAS drive MrWhite in machine
The main reasons for MrBlonde's maintenance is the placing of the SAS drive, and the troubleshooting the memory issues. At this moment we're missing 4GB memory in that machine. This is caused by either memory lane 0 to be defective, or dimmslot 0 to be defective. We'll be running diagnostic tests etc while waiting for MrWhite to complete its backups etc.
Services effected: TF2 servers, L4D2 servers
Expected downtime: 8-12 hours.
We'll post announcements on Twitter to report on the start, status and end of the maintenance. You can follow us at
http://www.twitter.com/specialattack