Site Server Down Time Expected During Server Move

Why there is the Need for a Better Server

The PHP Classes has been growing a lot since the it was started 20 years ago.

The growth has caused more demands in terms of hardware that can handle more simultaneous users, as well a lot of back-end activity that goes on to execute tasks like newsletter delivery to more than 100,000 active registered users, user ranking processing and chart updating, site search index updating, updating of packages that were changed in remote Git repositories, among many other tasks.

Recently we were forced to move to a new server due to an hardware failure but the current server is too weak to handled the current site load.

What Will Happen During the Migration?

The migration process itself already started, as we already hired a new server and all the software that is needed is being installed at the time of this writing.

Basically when all is ready to move to the new server, we just do a final data synchronization step and we will switch the DNS records to point to the IP addresses of the new server.

If you are interested to learn more about the steps of this migration, you may want to read this article here that we wrote in the past about how to do server migration with least of problems as possible.

How Long the Server Migration Will Take?

We already have done several server migrations in the past, so we have enough experience to do the server migration is a very short period.

We expect that the down time period may take 30 minutes or less, but we cannot guarantee it will be such a short period of because there can unexpected problems that may make it take more time.

When the Server Migration Will be Completed?

We expect that the migration will end during the weekend but if any unexpected problems happen, it may take more time.

What You Can Expect for the Future of the Site After the Migration?

We have put on hold many projects that depend on running the site on a better server. Just to comment on a few, we can mention that we will focus on the efforts to:

1. Sell more PHP elePHPants with better pricing to many users that are waiting for them

2. Start implementing the upcoming marketplace of products and services for PHP developers provided by other companies

3. The upcoming course to help developers to create businesses based on their own products and services

4. A tool to help developers finding what is the best area of vocation that they can pick to create a new business

5. A tool to find compatible people to work with them on new projects

You may learn more about this in another post that we published when it was the 20th birthday of the PHP Classes site.

Conclusion