Mass Server move to Houston ?

[JPC-Greg]

Hi Guys and Gals,
I wanted to ask something from all the clients. Most of you know about our services and the great ends we go to do our best for everyone. As we grow we find ourselves limited by not having hands on access to our servers and not being in our own facility.

We are presented with the oppotunity to change that and in about 3 months time be able to add the infamous Cogent provider to an existing tier 1 facility that currently has AT&T, Level 3, Yipes, Genuity.

The question is:
How many clients would be ok with 2-3 days of hard downtime to move all existing clients/servers from Ft Lauderdale, Florida to Houston, TX ?

How would that sit well with you guys as our clients, our backbone, our bosses .

[Eric]

Just a couple notes:

This is not what we have planned 100%, it's just an idea and probably the most cost effective solution for us to move the servers/data to Houston. We would just like to see how many clients would be willing to support this type of solution.

Please post any comments, thoughts, or ideas on this very subject so we can accumulate the pros and cons as pointed out from clients.

[jmdabb]

My customers would not accept 2-3 days downtime, they would accept a few hours.
What options exist for mirror servers etc to overcome that type of delay?

[weaver]

Hey -

I voted "I might be OK with it" - but truly, that is in the hoes you find another solution to the logistics of the move.

I'm not against the move - I think it's great that you should have better tech access, and laudable that you're willing to relocate.

But I am against and stunned about the 2-3 days total downtime... Hell, if it were my site, I might not care. But no way will my clients - one of which gets considerable traffic, be OK with 2-3 FULL & COMPLETE downtime... (i.e. no temp pages, no nothing...)

I've recently lived through another relocation with another host, and they had no downtime - I think they probably mirrored the servers, etc...

I know that's a lot of work and it's costly, but well perhaps you can find a good in-between solution - i.e. downtime with a 1 page temp page stating when the site will be back up might be an ok solution.

[jipco]

The move to an own NOC sounds great, however I do not think I can afford a 2-3 day downtime.
I think every effort should be made to find a solution to transfer servers with as little as possible downtime. Even if this would mean the migration period would be much longer.

[tfsevilla]

If you want to move, you must think in a solution for a continous service during the operation, but not cutting the service.

In this way, we'll have to find another service provider for these days, and may be don't return to Jag...

Thanks for your information,

Tomás

[JPC-Greg]

To mirror the servers would require a very large deal of funds , which means a long drawn out move. Whereas a one time fast move for everything would not only save on the costs of duplicating every server we have , it saves on having to pay for two locations . Buy paying for two locations is minor compared to the costs to replicate our setup at a new location to move data across. The end result of a fast move will be very beneficial to all clients but as mentioned it would require some extended downtime. The faster we move, the faster we get the new plans up such as our bulk space reseller plans, semi-ded plans, new ded server plans (that you can resell for us) and more.

When you add these things up its get more clear as to why we would like to do a fast move instead of a tickle move.

[JPC-Greg]

Originally posted by weaver
Hey -

I voted "I might be OK with it" - but truly, that is in the hoes you find another solution to the logistics of the move.

I'm not against the move - I think it's great that you should have better tech access, and laudable that you're willing to relocate.

But I am against and stunned about the 2-3 days total downtime... Hell, if it were my site, I might not care. But no way will my clients - one of which gets considerable traffic, be OK with 2-3 FULL & COMPLETE downtime... (i.e. no temp pages, no nothing...)

I've recently lived through another relocation with another host, and they had no downtime - I think they probably mirrored the servers, etc...

I know that's a lot of work and it's costly, but well perhaps you can find a good in-between solution - i.e. downtime with a 1 page temp page stating when the site will be back up might be an ok solution.

If we were talking about one, two , or three servers like most smaller hosts have then it wouldnt be an issue.

[tigertom]

I would be worried that search engines, upon
getting a 'host not found' error, would de-list my site i.e. if the Google spider came by etc.. etc..

It's taken me years to get decent listings.

ADDED: Can search engine spiders be fooled into thinking the page still exists, by cloaking?
It wouldn't be so bad if all requests for
mydomain.com/anypage.htm were surreptitiously
redirected to a page explaining that the site
would be back up soon, BUT the spider thinks
it's got the original URL. The idea is it doesn't sense the site/page is gone.

This would keep human moderators of directories,
like Yahoo, happy as well.

ADDED LATER: If I was doing this, I'd check out
all available options and ideas. JaguarPC isn't
the first to have to do this. There must be some Usenet forums etc. where you can find out the slickest way to move a server farm.

I don't want to teach you to suck eggs, but I've often laboured over something, only to find
someone else had done it before me and/or could
give me/spark off some good ideas.

[shwn]

No way is it okay with me to be down for 2 to 3 days! I would want plenty of advance notice if that is going to happen so I can switch hosts.

[MaggieScratch]

In my experience with such things, 2-3 days often turns into a week. You can't plan for the unexpected. Besides, I moved to a paid host from a free host because I wanted to avoid this kind of thing. It doesn't seem like something to which a professional hosting company should subject its clients.

I don't mean to lay the harsh on you...I do see the advantages of the move, but 2-3 days down time is too much.

You asked my opinion, and that's it. I do appreciate your asking for input.

[JPC-Greg]

Looks like a general "No" from what I see, thanks for all the feedback. Keep it coming.

[k_day64]

Hey Jag,

I understand the move will be over a short peroid of 2-3 days, but if a company is running there site that is 1/100 of their profit for a yr, which can be alot of money.

Will there be info provided on how to set up a back up webpage, off of a secondary server, or is this a total and utter cold move? (hardware and all)

<<< k_day64 >>>

[JPC-Greg]

Well thats what I was wanting to see about, how clients would feel if we took down everything single peice of hardware at DI and moved it to Houston in one quick move.

Doesn't look like that fairs well with anyone so I guess we're back to planning the move over a year or so....however long it takes to stock the hardware and replicate every server and account.

[dkadave]

All I need is a week notice so I can set-up my backup server with the info it needs!

If it's just 2-3 days, it's fine!