Control Panel Upgrade 03/02/2007

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

On February 5th we will start the upgrade of H-Sphere from it's current version to 2.5 Patch 8. We will also be looking at adding php5. We will also be adding .net 2.0 on it's own server(s) for .net 2 enabled sites only and this will have it's own plan.

Please keep in mind there will be some down time. And version 3.0 or the cp is follow soon after. Downtime is mainly for the control panel but each server will also get upgraded and restarted.

The upgrade is taking place mid week because the CP developers do not work on the weekends so mid week gives us 3 to 4 days to work with them to resolve any issues. We also do this upgrade very early in the morning starting around 2 or 3 am EST. (7/8am GMT).

Within 10 to 15 days we will send out notices about 3 times up to the dead line so everyone can have enough time to prepare for some down time due to the upgrade...
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
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Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

On Sunday February 4th during the hours of approximately 11am - 11pm EST (6pm-6am GMT) we will begin running check disk on all the Windows servers to make sure they are ready for the upgrade and that the drive(s) are 100% upgradeable. There will be sporadic reboots of the servers while this process is taking place so please be warned that you may experience downtime during this process. We will send out of a list of the affected servers in a separate email.

On February 5th at 11:00PM ET (6am GMT) we will begin to upgrade the H-Sphere Control Panel. This upgrade will more than likely take at least 8 hours; however that is an estimate and it may very well take longer due to the magnitude of this upgrade. The majority of the downtime will affect the Control Panel server ONLY. There will be sporadic reboots of all Windows servers so the upgrade(s) can take affect. Please be warned that you may experience downtime during this upgrade and to allow for a minimum of 8 hours for the upgrade to complete.

Questions and Answers:

Q: Why is this upgrade being done during the week and not weekend?

A: The developers of the control panel only work during the week, therefore the upgrade will be done while they are available to assist us if anything goes wrong.

Q: Why at night for Eastern Time?

A: The upgrade takes a minimum of 8 hours to complete. By this time the developers in Europe are online to assist us.

Q: Will ASP.net 2.0 be supported?

A: Yes, asp.net 2.0 will be available on all NEW servers installed; we plan to install a new Windows server within 7 days of completion of the upgrade. Current customers can ask to be moved to this server and new customers can ask to also be put on this system. It will be off for new signups at first but any can be moved to this if they plan to use .net 2.0.

Q: Will Front Page still be supported even though it has reached EOL (End of Life) by Microsoft?

A: Yes, it is still supported in H-Sphere 2.5 and we will keep supporting it for all customers at this time. However, we will be setting a date within the coming year to phase out support for FrontPage then to be removed from all systems by 2008. This is due to the fact there will be no more FrontPage fixes, support or upgrades from Microsoft.

Q: Will SPF for emails be supported?

A: Hsphere 2.5 does support SPF, however at this time we have not had time to fully test it in Hsphere 2.5 on a live system.

Q: Where can I see a list of new features and fixes?

A: You can view all of this at: http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/versions/index.php?v=all&p=r

We will do everything we can to make this upgrade as smooth possible. We appreciate your patience and cooperation during this process. If you have any questions please post them here or in an email.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

Saturday February 3rd at 11am ET (6PM GMT) we will begin running check disk on 17 servers. This process will take 2 days. This process *will* take down sites for the duration of time that it takes for check disk to run on the affected servers.

Each server will take approximately 3 hours and we will be doing 3 servers, approximately every 3 hours during the hours of 11am & 11pm ET (6PM -6AM GMT) on Saturday, February 3rd and Sunday, February 4th.

Below you will find a list of the affected servers and the order in which they will be attended to:

Saturday, February 3rd
NT6, NT16, NT18: 11am - 3pm ET
NT19, NT20, NT22: 3pm - 6pm ET
NT23, NT27, NT42: 6pm -9pm ET

Sunday February 4th
NT46, NT48, NT50: 11am - 3pm ET
CF3, NT10, NT21: 3pm - 6pm ET
NT29, NT36: 6pm - 9pm ET

**All times are approximate. While we estimate check disk to complete in 3 hours, it may take longer on some servers.

I understand that this upgrade is inconvenient to many users and appreciate your patience and cooperation.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Nocturnal · Joined: 29 May 2006 Posts: 14

Thanks for the heads up Johnny, I'm glad I went to check the forum for progress on the ASP.NET 2.0/hsphere upgrade. Will the new servers only support ASP.NET 2.0 or both 2.0 and 1.1?

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

Haven't decided that yet.... probably both, it's something we have never tried before and if things work out then 2.0 will eventually be installed on the older servers too. Manually migrating sites is not ideal and it is not untill the next version of the CP that users be able to switch versions from the control panel themselves.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

Check disk on the following servers was completed successfully on Saturday:

NT23, NT27, NT42, NT19, NT20, NT21, NT22 NT6, NT10, NT16, and NT18
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

Second phase of the checkdisks was also completed on time

The control panel Upgrade will go ahead as schedualed tonight/tomorrow morning.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

It's been four hours into the upgrade now. The cp is up but many features are not functional yet. Including ASPNET.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

We have server wide problems we are working on. This is a MAJOR upgrade that significantly changed the way the entire cluster functions, there are bound to be lots of problems that have to be ironed out but we cannot fix them all at once. Most sites should be up, while sitestudio has not been upgraded yet and some servers need their file permissions fixed.

Frontpage issues will be fixed at the end. And mySQL ugrades are on hold.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

I just want to let everyone know we are very sorry about some of the issues the upgrade has caused.

1. New users can't create accounts right now. We are working this out. This is due to psoft not supporting FreeBSD 6.0 or 6.1 we have been running it for months under 2.4 and now in 2.5 they said they don't support it and is causing some issues.

2. Mail issues. I think I got all the mail related tickets answered and fixed now and think we have the problem fixed over all.

3. Outgoing mail issues and web server to forward issues. This should be fixed at this time.

4. Bad links in the CP.
We are getting a few emails about bad links now in the CP like phpmyadmin and pgmyadmin links.

For phpmyadmin use this link: http://unix.bananahosting.com

5. Web servers.
All web servers should be up and running. I am sure some asp.net sites need permissions so if you are running asp.net and need more then read you have to let us know as H-Sphere now only set it to read permissions.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com

Bananaman · Site Admin Joined: 07 Apr 2004 Posts: 229 Location: UK

We still have a lot of work left from the upgrade to get everything right again, we got accounts fixed so users can add domains, make changes and such now. I think the next big thing was some AWstats issues.

Doesn't look like php5 and asp.net 2.0 will be here this month...We just need to get things cleared up before we go turning new things on and adding more things. Maybe a 7 to 10 days we should have everything back as it should be then we can start moving forward again.
_________________
/Johnny

- Banana Hosting -
"The fun place to host your site"
http://www.bananahosting.com