sunrunner_pei
09-22-2005, 08:26 AM
After a bumpy ride, the GAOC and G6OC are finally settled on our new server. We hope this will give us faster speeds and better reliablity. We're very happy with this decision, and hope it will benefit the site in the long run. We simply grew too big for shared hosting.
Why did it take so long to transfer the site?
We ran into several snags along the way. The first was an issue with DNS. As many of you know, DNS changes take several hours to complete. We were anticipating that, but ours took much longer than anticipated. Because we're on our own server now, we also have our own nameservers. Between a glitch on our server, and a misunderstanding on my part about how to register our new custom nameservers, we were about 12 hours longer than we had hoped.
Second was a site transfer issue. The GAOC is too large to do a site-to-site transfer, so we had to do a backup and restore. We tried to have the backup file created on the new server, however it errored about half way through. After some frantic emails to support, we created a new backup locally and tried to FTP it to the new server. I spent many hours Tuesday night trying to transfer the site over. Thanks to Erimar77's help, we discovered that there was a 2 GB file size limit on our FTP server, and our backup file was 2.5GB. After some fat trimming, I created a new, much smaller backup file (1.2 GB), and started the transfer/restore, and went to bed.
Wednesday (yesterday) morning, I woke up to see that the site had restored successfully, but at this point we were still having DNS issues, so no one was hitting the new site, myself included. I worked most of Wednesday afternoon getting the DNS issues straightened out.
Once DNS was fixed, we discovered that all our image attahments and avatars were corrupt. Some of you that made it on the short time we were online Wednesday know what I'm talking about. We decided to close the forums and do another backup/restore. Tried that, with the same result. We did some research, and found it is an issue with incompatibility with versions of MySQL. I sent some help requests to vBulletin support and our web host, and went to bed exhausted.
This morning I woke up to a reply from the head of support at vBulletin. He had somehting for me to try, a switch for the backup command, and with my fingers crossed I gave it a shot. Well, since you're reading this, you can tell it worked. Our forums restored properly, and our images are looking good.
I would like to thank a few people who helped out during this move. ..
First, my wife Karen and my son Evan. You two have no idea how much I appreciate your support. I know I was stressed out the last 2 days, and I probably took it out on you the most. Thanks for standing by me.
Kelly, thanks for your help and support through this. It's great to be able to vent when things aren't working.
Steve from vBulletin. Wat can I say man, you saved my ass. Thank you so much for helping with this restore issue!!!!
Eric (erimar77). Thanks for all your help and suggestions the other night. If it weren't for you helping me out, I'd probably have killed that non-responsive tech support guy.
Domainmonger. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with the nameserver issues. Lord knows the instructions from my web host weren't very clear.
Our advertisers. Without your continued support, we could never afford to make a move like this.
Tim @ ASO. Thanks for your help in getting our new server up and running. Your help is always appreciated. I just wish the rest of your staff were as helpful as you are.
And finally, you, our membership. Thank you for your patience through this very rough transition. Without you there would be no GAOC, and we know that. We hope you will enjoy our new home, and continue to enjoy our friendly atmosphere. We're here for you and because of you. Get back on the forums and enjoy!
Shawn & Kelly
Why did it take so long to transfer the site?
We ran into several snags along the way. The first was an issue with DNS. As many of you know, DNS changes take several hours to complete. We were anticipating that, but ours took much longer than anticipated. Because we're on our own server now, we also have our own nameservers. Between a glitch on our server, and a misunderstanding on my part about how to register our new custom nameservers, we were about 12 hours longer than we had hoped.
Second was a site transfer issue. The GAOC is too large to do a site-to-site transfer, so we had to do a backup and restore. We tried to have the backup file created on the new server, however it errored about half way through. After some frantic emails to support, we created a new backup locally and tried to FTP it to the new server. I spent many hours Tuesday night trying to transfer the site over. Thanks to Erimar77's help, we discovered that there was a 2 GB file size limit on our FTP server, and our backup file was 2.5GB. After some fat trimming, I created a new, much smaller backup file (1.2 GB), and started the transfer/restore, and went to bed.
Wednesday (yesterday) morning, I woke up to see that the site had restored successfully, but at this point we were still having DNS issues, so no one was hitting the new site, myself included. I worked most of Wednesday afternoon getting the DNS issues straightened out.
Once DNS was fixed, we discovered that all our image attahments and avatars were corrupt. Some of you that made it on the short time we were online Wednesday know what I'm talking about. We decided to close the forums and do another backup/restore. Tried that, with the same result. We did some research, and found it is an issue with incompatibility with versions of MySQL. I sent some help requests to vBulletin support and our web host, and went to bed exhausted.
This morning I woke up to a reply from the head of support at vBulletin. He had somehting for me to try, a switch for the backup command, and with my fingers crossed I gave it a shot. Well, since you're reading this, you can tell it worked. Our forums restored properly, and our images are looking good.
I would like to thank a few people who helped out during this move. ..
First, my wife Karen and my son Evan. You two have no idea how much I appreciate your support. I know I was stressed out the last 2 days, and I probably took it out on you the most. Thanks for standing by me.
Kelly, thanks for your help and support through this. It's great to be able to vent when things aren't working.
Steve from vBulletin. Wat can I say man, you saved my ass. Thank you so much for helping with this restore issue!!!!
Eric (erimar77). Thanks for all your help and suggestions the other night. If it weren't for you helping me out, I'd probably have killed that non-responsive tech support guy.
Domainmonger. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction with the nameserver issues. Lord knows the instructions from my web host weren't very clear.
Our advertisers. Without your continued support, we could never afford to make a move like this.
Tim @ ASO. Thanks for your help in getting our new server up and running. Your help is always appreciated. I just wish the rest of your staff were as helpful as you are.
And finally, you, our membership. Thank you for your patience through this very rough transition. Without you there would be no GAOC, and we know that. We hope you will enjoy our new home, and continue to enjoy our friendly atmosphere. We're here for you and because of you. Get back on the forums and enjoy!
Shawn & Kelly