Evan Reiter Share Posted February 12, 2012 Our main website has been experiencing ongoing and intermittent performance issues (i.e. slow loading at times) over the past few weeks. This has not seemed to impact the forums or other static portions of the website like the PRP and Getting Started Guide portals. There has been no impact on FSX or FlightDesk. Our ISP is aware of the issue and says the issue is "a performance problem related to disk I/O". The ISP has scheduled maintenance for next weekend to "upgrade the disk subsystem to resolve the issue". In the meantime, it's likely we will continue to see slow performance. I will post as additional information becomes available and when I find out about the exact amount of downtime we can expect on the site during the scheduled maintenance. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
Evan Reiter Author Share Posted February 15, 2012 The ISP posted an update last night and also conducted about 30 minutes of maintenance that involved the website being offline for a brief period. According to the post, the ISP has installed new server infrastructure and is now copying data over to the new hardware. Once that is completed, the ISP will "schedule [...] maintenance to complete the transition to the newly upgraded disk infrastructure. This is tentatively scheduled for this weekend but will be dependent upon the completion of the data replication process". I'll re-post when I see another update with the planned timing of the next maintenance outage. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
Evan Reiter Author Share Posted February 16, 2012 2012-02-16 10:24:49: The data replication process is currently about one fourth complete. Based on that progress, we are estimating we will be able to perform the maintenance for the disk infrastructure cutover on Monday or Tuesday night. We will continue to post updates here. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
Evan Reiter Author Share Posted February 22, 2012 2012-02-21 9:33:49: As previously noted, the replication process is an iterative process... due to the time the replication takes, once completed, the copy is out of date, but less out of date than the previous pass. Each iteration takes less time, until we reach a point of diminishing returns... at which point we move forward with the primary cutover stage, which involves shutting down the server, replicating all remaining outstanding changed files. The multiple iterative passes are designed to minimize the downtime needed for that final stage. The first pass took several days. The last pass 22 hours. We are currently running another pass to evaluate if the copy time will reduce below 22 hours. Based on this, the earliest date we would move forward with the final maintenance stage is Wednesday 2/22, although we need to complete this replication pass and assess before making the final decision. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
Evan Reiter Author Share Posted February 24, 2012 In order to complete maintenance to resolve the ongoing performance issues we have seen, our ISP has scheduled maintenance estimated to last 12-24 hours beginning at 10pm ET on Saturday, 2/25/2012. DESCRIPTION: [The server] has been experiencing intermittent performance issues over the past month related to its disk subsystem. The maintenance on Saturday is the second stage of a two part maintenance to move the data volume to new disk infrastructure designed to address the performance issues. In order to make a final synchronization of the data volume to the new infrastructure, all activity to the volume must be suspended. The synchronization and cutover is anticipated to take 12-24 hours. FSX and FlightDesk will not be affected by the outage. However, the website and forums will be offline for the duration of maintenance. E-mails sent to BVA accounts will be held until the maintenance is completed so you will be unable to contact us during this time. The ISP will be posting a maintenance notice on the homepage of the website for us; we will have no access to the wording or location of the message. As the ISP posts updates we will continue to notify you via our social media profiles. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
Evan Reiter Author Share Posted February 26, 2012 Maintenance has been completed. All services should be back online. I am able to access the website, e-mail, and forums with no problems. Additionally, the site seems to be loading much more quickly than before. Please keep an eye out for any issues with missing links and let us know how the website performace is over the next few days. Evan Reiter Community Director Administration Team Link to comment
