[TimG]

Found this on the ACBL website today:

Quote

ACBL Headquarters email will be down from 5 PM Central Time Friday, October 5 through Monday morning, October 8 as we move to a new server. We apologize for any inconvenience.

I know very little about this sort of thing, but am surprised that a server switch would require 2-3 days of e-mail outage. Am I crazy?

[RMB1]

 TimG, on 2012-October-05, 08:38, said:

I know very little about this sort of thing, but am surprised that a server switch would require 2-3 days of e-mail outage. Am I crazy?

The IT people managing this sort of thing will ask for as long as they can get - if something goes wrong it may take another 24 hours to fix it - so if the client organisation can give them a weekend then they will take it. Probably start at 6pm on Friday and finish by midnight.

[TimG]

What's involved?

[ArtK78]

Besides, it is a weekend, so the people who would normally be answering e-mails might not be there anyway.

[kenberg]

 TimG, on 2012-October-05, 08:38, said:

Found this on the ACBL website today:I know very little about this sort of thing, but am surprised that a server switch would require 2-3 days of e-mail outage. Am I crazy?

I am unable to comment confidently about your mental health, but I suppose they are just playing it safe. It seems to me that I have seen far more complex systems redone in far shorter time periods, but I have not kept a log.

Bottom line: If it works well when they are done, no complaints.

[hrothgar]

 TimG, on 2012-October-05, 08:38, said:

Found this on the ACBL website today:I know very little about this sort of thing, but am surprised that a server switch would require 2-3 days of e-mail outage. Am I crazy?

This all depends on whether they are deploying new hardware.

If there are swapping out hardware they should be able to get the new system configured and then just change a DNS record.
The outage time should be very short

If they are installing a new OS on the existing hardware it could take a big longer.

[jwccsllc]

 hrothgar, on 2012-October-05, 11:52, said:

This all depends on whether they are deploying new hardware.

If there are swapping out hardware they should be able to get the new system configured and then just change a DNS record.
The outage time should be very short

If they are installing a new OS on the existing hardware it could take a big longer.

This all depends on the underlying OS and mail servers. I have been designing, building, installing, and supporting systems for ISPs and small-to-medium businesses since 1994, originally Unix based, now all are on Linux servers.

I have moved ISP's mail servers with tens of thousands of email accounts to new hardware and new OS with effectively zero down time.

We build a new Linux server, get it configured, sync the user accounts, make an initial copy of all email on the server, shut down the old server's incoming mail and POP/IMAP servers, change the DNS to point to the new server, then sync changes to the old server to bring over mail that came in since the first sync.

The worst that happens is that there may be people who don't see some new messages that came in between the syncs until the resync is complete, and some messages they deleted may reappear.

Of course if you're running Microsoft Exchange, it's a bit more complicated.

Bill

[jonottawa]

 TimG, on 2012-October-05, 08:38, said:

Found this on the ACBL website today:I know very little about this sort of thing, but am surprised that a server switch would require 2-3 days of e-mail outage. Am I crazy?

Hint: M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I

[TimG]

 jwccsllc, on 2012-October-05, 13:48, said:

I have moved ISP's mail servers with tens of thousands of email accounts to new hardware and new OS with effectively zero down time.

That's what I would have expected. I really thought that in this Age these things had become sort of trivial.

[jillybean]

 TimG, on 2012-October-05, 20:47, said:

That's what I would have expected. I really thought that in this Age these things had become sort of trivial.

Who knows, the ACBL still use dot matrix printers.

[mycroft]

Hey, if you find an 11x17 laser, preferably on fanfold paper, that can be carried around without breaking or throwing toner all over the back seat, let the ACBL know! Preferably for less than $10K, too. Old-style dot-matrix is actually better for the job than modern printers.

I've seen a tournament printed off a letter laser printer. Between all the tape and all the people crowded at half-distance trying to read the information, *I*'d never want to do it...

[Thiros]

Near Letter Quality FTW!

[barmar]

And don't forget how many printers ACBL needs to run an NABC (my guess is something like 50). At at least $500 apiece, that would be a huge expense.