This message is to inform all members of an upcoming server move.

On Wednesday, April 22nd at 10:00 AM PST, myArmoury.com will migrate to a new and improved server.

I'll do my best to make this migration seamless, but there are bound to be a few issues including some downtime on Wednesday.

The main issue affecting the forum may include the loss of new posts made after April 22nd at 10:00 AM PST that may be made on the "old" server while the data migration is happening. This means that it might be best to refrain from posting anything important until you get the "all clear, we've completed the migration" message. I'll try to keep this from happening.

Other issues might include some broken features or links. I'll do my best to remedy any of these as I find them.

This will not be our final resting place, but is the next step to getting to that point. With luck, I'll be able to migrate to a final home within a year.

Thank you for your patience and continued support.

Looks like we're done.

Done? ha! who said we're done?

We're on our third box in a week. This site is going to be the death of me.

I don't know if this is going to be more stable than the last. Time will tell.

It seems that with the new server it either works really well or gets rather clunky at times - yesterday I experienced quite a lot of troubles connecting to it, and likely not on my side as everything else worked just fine. This morning it works like charm though.

Indeed, works extremely well at the moment. Let's hope it remains that way, was starting to get forum withdrawal symptoms yesterday :)

Nathan - Anybody can dream of tossing computers off roofs. But how many can fantasize in historically accurate detail about donning armor & chopping them to tiny satisfying bits with swords & battle axes? :-)

ps. Thanks for all your efforts.
ps2. unplug them first :-)

The new server's hard drive crashed. We lost some data -- posts and other stuff. I don't know how much. The site is now on a temporary server and a backup of the data is being used. myArmoury.com is going to be the death of me.

Things are a bit slow currently. We're on a temporary machine right now. It's not a very good box from what I can see.

I'm trying to get this site onto its final resting place: a brand new server all alone by itself. it's an expensive option and is going to take time for me to get it all set up and working.

Time time time money money money. I guess those things fix most problems in life, right?

I apologize for the lost data and the slow server that's going on right now.

Nathan,

No need to apologize to anyone...

Find it impossible to send time, but did send a bit of the other element.

Regards,
Dan

There will be downtime tomorrow. Maybe a lot.

We're on a dedicated server right now.

Currently there are 156 members online...

The server is doing very well so far. The performance is quite good.

I'm sure there may be some configuration glitches here and there and I'm chasing them as we speak.

There was a tiny bit of lost data during the migration. Not much. That couldn't have been helped unless I took the site offline for the entire day. I opted to keep it up during the migration and just deal with the minor annoyance of having lost a bit of data. I did disable the site for about 15 minutes to prevent people from posting new stuff right when the boxes were being changed over, but that was the only real downtime.

If you saw the "disabled" message for longer than that, you were actually viewing the old server and waiting for your Domain Name Server (DNS) to point to the new server. The time it takes for the DNS to propagate depends on many things, including your location on the planet and how long the various servers between you and myArmoury.com decide to cache the old info.

Anyway, things are looking good and with any luck I'll get to sleep at some point soon :)

I feel your pain. I'm a system Engineer/Programmer/Administrator, so I know how things get... I'm glad to hear it's starting to settle down. Did you go with a colo option with your own box?

Shared hosting certainly has its pitfalls, but some of the newer services out there have matured quite well.

Hi Ed-

Yeah. I'm on a dedicated server now sitting in a colo with bandwidth to spare. No more overages. No more shared resources. No more mysterious costs at the end of the month. All those things are great. The only drawback is that the monthly cost is higher than it was before all this started, but it evens out given the benefits and is all predictable now.

I did the final software upgrade/installation today so we're solid now. I can relax.

I just wanted to post a quick update and say that before myArmoury.com was on its own server, I had to reset the Web server every other day. There were many times where it crashed several times in a single day.

This dedicated server has been up for 145 days straight without a restart. In fact, I haven't done a single thing to the server itself or its configuration in months.