New Year's Eve Server Upgrades - UPDATED 1/3 Options

[buzz]

ALL IDF servers were hardware upgraded approximately between 5:15pm EST and 6:45pm. So far everything looks good. We'll need to do another maintenance window for software upgrades at approximately 3am EST, midnight Pacific or about 8 hours from now. The site will be down for about 30-45 minutes between 3am EST and 3:45am.

After that, we'll be monitoring it closely for several weeks. This will be the last of the upgrades for IDF for the upcoming Idol season. Hopefully, we've hardened and will have increased reliability for the entire season for American Idol 9.

Thanks for putting up with all the downtime during these past 4-5 Idol off-season months while we experimented with and drastically increase our investment into our server hardware. So far this year, Tom and I have spent almost $7,000 in server hardware and we can only hope it's made a difference in preparation for the new Idol season.

The only things that will stop us now should be (other than the hardware we just put in): a) >30 min power loss, b) hosting provider loses internet, c) water flooding of datacenter, d) natural disasters, e) terrorist attacks, f) regular backup schedule

Happy 2010!

UPDATE @ 1/1/2010 3:42am: This is done and it's working great! Supposedly this will increase speed throughout the forums, but we'll see if it does anything. Let us know if it feels snappier. -buzz

UPDATE @ 1/3/2010 1:03am: Site is back up. The new hardware apparently didn't work for very long. Very sorry about the outage. Things not so solid at the moment. Site could die again but we're doing everything we can to minimize for now. To better communicate throughout outages, bookmark or follow @idolforums for status updates.

[Shadetee]

Does Godzilla fall under terrorist attack or natural disaster? Or do you have contingencies ready for him?

[buzz]

^ restore from backup. pray for the best.