Server Movement Done Right

[kayger12]

Just wanted to take a second and publicly thank Mark for the great job that was done with moving this awesome site to a better server.

I can't imagine the work, time, and logistical planning that went into making it happen, but I'm sure it was a royal PITA at times. The updates via Facebook and Twitter were certainly appreciated by those of us who were jonesing for our favorite forum.

Anyhow, not to make this a Hallmark card, but just wanted to say thanks again for doing such a great job running this site and being attentive to the membership.

After seeing some of the server issues and membership treatment occurring at another BMW forum, it made me appreciate the way things are done here all the more.

Long live the Mafia!

[pyreguy]

Its NOTICEABLY faster too. Well done!

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Keith, thanks a lot, pal. Really appreciated.

As you know, I simply do things differently when it comes to running this site. Customer service (in this case, membership service), is my first priority. This is not my first online business. It is my first online forum, though. Still, what I learned at my previous online projects and businesses is that interactivity, honesty, and accessibility are paramount to being successful (that goes for whatever you're doing in life). I simply took what I learned elsewhere, and brought it here. People just want to be treated with respect, so that's what I do. Anyhow, enough of that. You guys know how I feel about you. You're the greatest. I've lucked out with the quality and professionalism of the members who reside here.

Anyhow, I don't mind sharing the details of what took place behind the scenes. But you guys might be interested in what took place long before we made the jump to a new server.

ZHPMafia.com was conceived on October 2, 2010. I became a member of the site on October 25, 2010. I was the second member; admin was first (more on that in a bit). For the host, I chose MediaTemple.net. My admin, who has a lot of experience with online sites (I believe he's probably owned a dozen or more), recommended Media Temple. His forum had been hosted by Media Temple for years. No issues at all. As a result, he wholeheartedly recommended them.

I figured that, because we had a small site (and likely would for some time), I would go with a basic grid service ($20 a month). Almost from the start, I ran into service issues with Media Temple. The host was, at times, unbearably slow. During the coming months, I would learn that a lot of the problems stemmed from a bad cluster (number 7) at Media Temple. While it was nice to know what the problem was, it most certainly didn't make me feel any better, since my members were being impacted almost on a daily basis. There was, in fact, one week in which we suffered an outage (from as little as five minutes to as much as 30 minutes) every day. That was my breaking point.

As a temporary solution to my problems, I opted for a more expensive service at Media Temple. I bought their Grid Container Lite ($40 a month). It's a dedicated environment that should, in theory, provide for a more consistent experience. While it was better than the $20 grid service, it, too, was plagued with technical issues. What's more, ZHPMafia.com still suffered from slowdowns -- even if we were not getting outages. Slowdowns stink because it often results in database errors. We've all experienced those: double posts, time-stamp errors, etc. By early December, I realized that Media Temple was not the company for me.

Over the next month or so (all of December), I complained incessantly to my admin about the crappy Media Temple performance. My admin, who likely felt guilty for recommending Media Temple (but shouldn't have), understood my plight. We both agreed that it was time to find a new host. I signed up with a new host in early January (January 4).

In the meantime, moving to a new host wasn't as simple as moving from one house to another. Media Temple had a proprietary control panel. I'd be using cpanel at ServInt (the new host). As such, the new host put the responsibility of moving squarely on our shoulders. ServInt, by the way, has awesome customer service. They simply won't migrate your service, though, unless you're doing an apples-to-apples transfer. We were not.

By the second week of January, my admin guy, as he delved into the logistics of what it would take to move to the new host, said that it would take a little bit of time for him to get up to speed on what it would take to get us from Media Temple to ServInt. In the interim, I should expect to stay with Media Temple a while longer. Uggh!

On January 13, I called Media Temple and upgraded my service to a grid container with 512MB of RAM. I must say that, during January 13 to February 11, we did not suffer any outages and we only suffered a few slowdowns. Still, Media Temple was charging $150 a month for this 512MB service. Luckily, Media Temple put me on a trial plan -- because of the lousy service I had received up to this point. If I didn't like the service, I could cancel within 30 days -- getting a full refund in the process. I had nothing to lose, so I did it.

So, admin and I realized that we were now dealing with a hard deadline. We had to be with the new host (actively using the host, that is) by February 12. My admin guy, who has a full-time job elsewhere, had to learn -- from scratch -- everything that would be required to get us to the new host. As you can imagine, it took some time to acquire the knowledge he would need.

I, meanwhile, started publicizing my various communication outlets. I told you guys about Twitter and Facebook. If anything ever happened, you could always find out what was going on by logging into ZHP Mafia's Facebook page (here) and Twitter (here). I just knew that, eventually, I would have to use these tools to communicate with you guys, so I planned ahead.

Admin was busy behind the scenes as well. He attempted to make a copy of ZHP Mafia's database on January 9. He made several copies, all of which were of varying sizes. Haha. Not good. Eventually, though, he got a clean copy. After doing a little more digging, admin concluded that we still couldn't make the jump to ServInt. Admin was not up to speed on moving from here to there.

By February 1, I was getting a bit antsy. I continued to inquire about our move date. Admin, though, remained calm. He wanted to know when our drop-dead move date had to be. I said February 11. He assured me that we'd be ready to go.

Admin talked with both Media Temple and ServInt during the first 10 days of February. He got tips on how to make the move as seamless as possible (99% of this information came from ServInt, whose technical support guys kill Media Temple's). On February 11, admin made one more call to ServInt. We were ready to go. We chose 12:01 AM Eastern (February 12) as our target time to take the site down. The site officially went down at 12:08 AM Eastern on February 12.

During the subsequent 21 hours, there must have been a lot of "fun" taking place behind the scenes. Pointing the site to the correct servers was easy. That happened immediately. However, admin noticed that there were some serious database errors popping up on vBulletin, which was now being hosted by ServInt. (By the way, the forum was turned off to the public at this point; admin and I still had access to the live forum, though.)

Admin put a service call into ServInt to find out what was going on. ServInt jumped right on it. They eventually narrowed the problem down and concluded that we had not copied some necessary tables from our database. This is where it gets murky for me but it's my understanding that, because our database was pretty big, we had to use a different method to get our database from Media Temple to ServInt. We had to use SSH instead of the process we were using. Several phone calls later, Media Temple had us ready to make an SSH copy. My admin made a copy and uploaded it to ServInt. ServInt imported the database on to their server and, finally, we had success. Within two hours of the importation, we were live again to the world.

What I just described can only be considered a Reader's Digest version. There was a lot more that went into this move, but you get the gist of it. I have a new-found respect for server moves and my admin has a new-found respect for database administrators, he says.

Earlier, I mentioned that we'd get back to the admin -- and why he was member one. By now, it should be apparent that a site cannot run without a competent admin. My admin launched this site back in October (even though it was not live). He made sure that everything worked properly before we took it live for everyone. During the ensuing months, he made sure that things worked properly. I'm extremely thankful for my admin. Luckily he's an old friend of mine (we both grew up in the BMW community together). My admin bills have been minuscule. If this site ever becomes financially successful, I will be writing a big check to my friend. For now, he's making due with my modest financial gestures.

So, we begin a new chapter now. No host is perfect. I expect that ServInt, as good as they are, will suffer some technical problem that will impact us here at one point or another. However, I don't believe that it will ever be anything like the stuff we've seen from Media Temple.

Media Temple's shared grid service sucked. The grid container lite was better. And the grid container that was $150 a month was solid -- even if it was ridiculously overpriced.

ServInt is charging me $50 a month for the virtual private server that we're on. We have more storage and we're on a faster connection. ServInt's technical support, from what my admin guy told me, is top notch.

Now my work begins again. I have to learn a new control panel. Woot woot!

[mimalmo]

I agree Keith. A job well done Marcus.

[pyreguy]

Thanks for the writeup Mark. I am always interested to know what goes on behind the scenes here. You do top-notch work and surround yourself with top-notch people. This site will always be successful because of that. Thanks for all the work you do for us to log on and talk about these cars we love.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

You guys are welcome. Glad to do it.

[Mtnman]

Once again, you show why I said you are the most thorough person i know. A full detailed write up of this was not remotely necessary, but you know we would all dig it. Thanks Marcus, for everything. Hope you get some sleep tonight!

[Marcus-SanDiego]

I got sleep last night. Much needed.

The night before I got four hours.

Looking forward to a little more sleep tonight.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Once again, you show why I said you are the most thorough person i know. A full detailed write up of this was not remotely necessary, but you know we would all dig it. Thanks Marcus, for everything. Hope you get some sleep tonight!

David, glad I could do it. The write up was no trouble at all.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Just wanted to follow up with this thread.

Since moving to our new server, we've only gone down once (for about 40 minutes). Remember the old days when we had Media Temple? Yeah. That's what I'm saying.

ServInt rules.

P.S., ServInt's customer service -- and especially its tech support -- is second to none.