Server upgrade tonight (estimated half hour of downtime)

Bugabee
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Linode needs to reboot all their servers for a security upgrade which they tell us means up to 2 hours per server (we have one for the webserver and one for the database). We’re going to take the excuse to upgrade our servers before then. In theory we can set up Mongo’s database replication and do this with zero downtime. In practice we failed to get that to work last time we tried so we’re probably going to just take the hit on downtime while the database copies over to the new server. We think that means half an hour.

Whenever we have downtime, we live-tweet what’s going on via @beemstat.

Thanks everyone! Sorry for any hassle this entails (it would actually be really valuable to hear about such, so we can gauge for example how much effort it’s worth putting into db replica sets and such to get downtime near or literally to zero, or if it’s only likely to be a big hassle if it were multiple hours, etc).

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Will ifttt goals automatically retry once the server is back? Because if not, you are going to need replication sooner rather than later.

Also I assume that any goals that couldn’t be updated because the server wasn’t up at the deadline means the derailment was not legitimate?

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We think everything, including IFTTT and other autodata, will retry fine. Let us know of suspected failures.

Definitely; shouldn’t be many people who are that unlucky but just reply to the legit check and say so if so.

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Everything seems to be buzzing along again! Thanks everyone!

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I don’t leave anything to chance with my Beeminding. If you posted your downtimes far enough in advance I would slack off and make sure my goals derail while your servers are down to get the freebies.

I thought you said you needed to go for a jog today?
Nah, Beeminder is going to be down at 7:15, thank goodness.

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