Site Update » Downtime & Server Move · 3:39pm Jun 13th, 2020
Hi all. Firstly, apologies for the extended period of unexpected downtime. Obviously any kind of downtime is non ideal, but unexpected is more annoying all around.
On Friday morning (GMT) we experienced a hardware failure on our database server. To our knowledge there is no data loss of any kind. We have fairly regular backups hosted off-site, regardless. The exact cause isn't entirely clear at this time, but instead of wrestling with trying to get the hardware sorted (it was a dedicated server) we decided that this was a good opportunity to make a server move we've been planning for a long time over to Digital Ocean.
Clearly this is not an ideal situation. Moving servers requires a *lot* of configuration changes, especially when moving from a dedicated server setup to a more clustered VPS approach and ideally we would have had time to test it while the existing site was still live. We've done our best to check everything is working but unfortunately it's obviously been a bit of a rush job to try and get the site working again and move on from there. Other than potential code issues, part of the challenge here is finding an appropriate level of resources for the site to run on which we have deliberated on extensively but will remain theory-crafting until we see true load.
Hopefully there shouldn't be any particularly notable issues on the new setup, but while it's in a stage of infancy it's unlikely there aren't a few issues that haven't cropped up in our testing.
Again, apologies for the downtime and for any ongoing issues.
I'd also like to give a massive shoutout to Xaquseg who has orchestrated the entire work here and has done an amazing job at what is typically a very thankless job. Please send your thanks to Xaq, who deserves any and all credit for this work.
I survived the Great Fimfiction Crash of 2020.
It's alright, I'm sure many folks blame 2020 in general. Happy to have the site back!
eyyyyy
Thank you!
Good to be home. I missed you guys.
Good to have Fimfiction.net back
Good job getting everything done with no loss, given the circumstances.
We appreciate the hard work.
5283112
This should be a t-shirt
Thank you Knighty and Xaquseg!
We understand
I'm certain you guys worked hard to get everything back up. Without you, fimfiction would not be what it is. So thank you guys for all you do!
Much appreciated, it's good to be back.
Derpy do the job?
Knighty having issues in his personal life
Fimfiction
Site goes down for a day
fimfiction
5283112
And all I got was a loudly T-shirt.
It’s great to be back. ^^
All good. At least everything's back to normal.
As a system administrator myself, I know all too well. Great job Xaquseg at getting this back up! Here's to a more stable server future.
It's probably All My Fault. My latest story had been submitted & was just waiting to be uploaded. Clearly, I've been hanging around Estee too long & that caused the server to go down before my story to be posted.
Whoo
Let us know beforehand
At last.
Huzzah! Thank you for your hard work on this!
5283125
To be fair I’ve never really seen knighty post about his personal life?
5283131
I am certain, in the future, they will be sure to give notification before unexpected hardware failures.
IT LIVES!
Thank you for the work.
Thank you for the hard work and swift site recovery anyway Knighty.
Thank you Xaquseg!
Xaq is great, thank you!
Thankya for keeping us folks informed, and I dunno where to thank Xaquseg to give them the required thanking. Still, glad that we were kept in the loop and hope things are pretty stable!
Thanks, Xaq!
THANK YOU XAQUSEG!
Thank you Xaq.
5283112
We all did.
Edit: By that I mean I share your relief as I'm sure MANY others do. Sorry.
Thanks for all the hard work guys, and especially Xaq!
5283137
He doesn't, not really (and God bless him for it) but his twitter feed does hint at him having a less then ideal time of it lately
Thanks for the work on getting the site back up.
Glad to see it's back. At last
Right when you're about to buy a new car anyway might be the best time to total the old one. You still don't want to do that... probably... but as times to do it go...
Thank you for the hard work bringing us back.
Thank you for fixing this problem Xaq, you have worked so hard on bringing this place back alive. And for that, I thank you.
Thank you! You guys rock!
Thank you Xaq!
Thanks to all those people that helped get Fimfic back up. Because we like pony stories.
Glad to see everything's back up and running! You guys are awesome with how much work you put into running, and fixing, this site!
We appreciate you guys working hard it’s understandable stuff happens in life for a whole server move that was pretty quick even if there are going to be bugs
Thanks for the update, and for your and Xaquseg ‘s hard work behind the scenes to keep fimfiction alive!
Thank you Xaquseg, knighty and everyone here who keeps this website running, day after day.
It's ok, good to see this site back. It's like home. :) Also Knighty and Xaquseg, thank you for keeping this site running.
thanks xaq!