Scheduled Server Migration

[Tim]

Hey there!

Some of you may already be aware of this, but I am planning on migrating the server to a different operating system. Well, I've decided to do it either this weekend, or sometime next week.
The plan is to do the move around Wednesday (2015-07-08), but I may have to either do it early, or delay it for a few days due to a university test I have around that date.

Both websites will be offline during the move, and so will the email service. Assuming everything goes according to plan, I expect for the migration to take about a day; but in case things go wrong, it might take two, or even three days (hopefully not).

I have a test server where I am setting up all the configuration as we speak --- that should make sure that the move goes as smoothly as possible; that said, sometimes unexpected problems pop up.
Assuming everything goes smoothly, the vast majority of the time will be spent transferring data to a backup server, and then back here (about 120GB or so).

I won't go too much into the reasons behind the move, but the new server should be easier to manage for me, and it should also be more secure.

[R.Flagg]

Rock on, MrTim, rock on!

[Tim]

Okay, migration is done now.

Sorry it took this long --- the file transfer from and to the server was much slower than expected ...

Everything should be up and running now, save for email service, and the file downloads (UMODs and ZIPs --- they are still being transferred)... It's 3:40 AM here, and I need some sleep, so I'll deal with that tomorrow.
Please let me know if something doesn't work!

[warhead]

Thanks very much for all that you do

[Hermskii]

Indeed. Thanks. What motivated the change? Didn't you do this a year ago too?

[Tim]

Indeed. Thanks. What motivated the change? Didn't you do this a year ago too?

Three years ago. And it was multiple reasons. The new server should be more secure, and it will be much easier to support others trying to do web-related work on it.
There were also some ... unsatisfactory developments regarding the operating system I was using (Debian Linux). Long story short, I don't trust it anymore for stability and security.

The server is now on FreeBSD + nginx, in case anyone's wondering (it was Debian Wheezy + Apache before).