Author: Chris Wik

Update 11:34 Sorry for the extended outage. We are happy to report the server is now back up and running with Apache 2.4.10 and PHP 5.6.5

Update 11:23 Apache and Lasso are back up and running, PHP sites currently still returning Internal Server Error.

Update 11:17 We are making progress but have run into a few unforeseen issues that have caused unexpected downtime. We expect to be up and running again within a few minutes.

Update 11:08 The upgrade is in progress, please bear with us.

Our Managed Web Hosting accounts currently run PHP 5.3

Version 5.3 has been end of life for quite some time and is no longer being actively maintained. Some new PHP software now requires version 5.4 or higher in order to run. We are therefore planning to upgrade PHP.

We have tentatively scheduled this for Monday the 26th of January at 11:00 GMT

Loading the new version of PHP will require a restart of Apache but otherwise should be very straight forward and only cause a few seconds downtime.

Please take a moment to ensure any software you are running on our Managed Web Hosting or Reseller Hosting accounts, such as Magento, WordPress, Joomla or Drupal is up to date and is compatible with PHP 5.6.

A list of deprecated features and backwards-incompatible changes for each version can be found at:

http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.deprecated.php
http://php.net/manual/en/migration54.incompatible.php

http://php.net/manual/en/migration55.deprecated.php
http://php.net/manual/en/migration55.incompatible.php

http://php.net/manual/en/migration56.deprecated.php
http://php.net/manual/en/migration56.incompatible.php

We will be on hand during the day on Monday, so please test your sites post-upgrade and if you find any issues please email support@anu.net and we’ll do our best to help resolve them.

19:35 CET, maintenance finished. This is what we have been working so hard to achieve today: performance on existing 2x1GbE storage network:

Timing buffered disk reads:  558 MB in  3.01 seconds = 185.38 MB/sec

Performance on the new hardware with 2x10GbE:

Timing buffered disk reads: 2048 MB in  3.00 seconds = 681.77 MB/sec

Thank you for your patience and apologies to all our customers for the 2 brief outages we had today during this maintenance window.

19:20 CET, storage server high availability kicked in when it shouldn’t have, due to a broken network connection. We ended up having to reboot both primary and secondary nodes. Should be back online in a few minutes.

14:50 CET, everything is running normally. We are going to take a break and will continue on the 10GbE upgrade this evening.

14:35 CET, we are currently rebooting Xen hosts due to an unforeseen disruption in access to centralised storage. ETA for Xen VMs to come back online 5-10 minutes.

————-

Start: Friday 2015-01-16 21:00 CET

End: Sunday 2015-01-18 07:00 CET

During this maintenance window we will be:

– Upgrading the LAN Ethernet switches from 1Gbps to 10Gbps Ethernet
– Upgrading the ams1-san-1-1 and ams1-san-1-2 storage servers from 4 x 1Gbps to 2 x 10Gbps (this involves replacing the NICs)
– Replacing CAT-5 cabling with new CAT-6 cabling to support future 10Gbps upgrades
– Removing a number of end of life servers and other obsolete equipment to make room for new servers

No disruption to service is expected during this maintenance, however as with any major upgrade there is a possibility of unforeseen consequences arising which could affect service availability. In such a case we will endeavour to keep customers informed as quickly as possible via this blog. Thank you for your understanding.

Please join us in welcoming the newest addition to our team Ashley Lipscombe.

Ashley will be helping man our customer support desk, keep our servers running smoothly, and stay on top of security and bug fix updates. He has 5 years relevant work experience under his belt including working with Linux servers, hosting control panel systems, email, domain names and virtual servers.

In addition to his excellent customer support skills, Ashley brings fresh ideas and a new perspective to further improve  our business processes and product line.

Aside from technology, Ashley enjoys travel, socialising and playing video games. Originally from London, Ashley is now based in sunny Malta.