WCG Server Move and Temporary Shutdown 0300Hrs 8th January 2009..

[Adywebb]

WCG are moving their servers to a new site in Canada - this means that from around 3am Thursday 8th Jan the site will be down as will the work servers etc so no work will be sent or received for up to 5-6 days if I read it correctly.

I suggest folks increase the work in their queues to cover this period

As World Community Grid continues to grow, we require more and more space to store the results from, and data for, our members. Our current infrastructure has been running World Community Grid since November 2004. This infrastructure has worked very well for us. However, the growth of World Community Grid has reach the point where it is time to move to more powerful servers and have access to more bandwidth. This is a direct result of the awesome contribution that all of you have made and continue to make. We look forward to continuing to grow in the new environment.

To prepare for our expansion in 2009 and beyond, World Community Grid is getting brand new equipment and relocating the hosting environment to a new IBM location in Toronto, Canada. Moving to a new location will allow World Community Grid to have access to a new and secure hosting center that is being set up at this time. When fully migrated, we will be able to process the results returned by members and the statistics accumulated by members much more quickly and efficiently.

This hosting center move notification is important because it will provide a better experience for our members and because it may mean that some members may need to modify their firewall settings to allow the World Community Grid software to communicate with the hosting center. If your firewall does prompt you, please re-approve your computers access to World Community Grid. This hosting center move will not affect the URL or web address you use to reach the World Community Grid web site and any existing bookmarks will continue to work.

We are planning to be running in the new environment by the end of the first full week of January. In order to get there from here, we have a tremendous amount of work to do. Most of it will be behind the scenes and not visible to the members. However, some of the changes will be visible to the members. These changes include the following:

We will start making changes soon to work unit deadlines so that we can reduce the amount of data to be transferred between hosting centers. The new deadlines will be only one week, so please keep an eye on your work units to make sure you can complete them on time.

When we are ready to transfer the databases, we will have to stop the website, forums and grid. We expect this step to occur around Jan 8th. During this time members will only see a page that explains what World Community Grid is and contains information about the progress of the change over and invites new members to return in a few days. Also during this time, the BOINC clients will not be able to communicate with the servers.

Finally, our IP address will change. This will cause some people's computers firewalls to request permission to communicate with our servers. Our new IP addresses will be 198.20.8.241 and 198.20.8.246.

We anticipate that the move will be fully completed during the week of January 12, 2009.

We will update you as we proceed through this change, and we sincerely appreciate your wonderful support!

We continue to move forward on our plan and you will be receiving an email shortly with a brief summary of the above information.

We plan to shut down the website and BOINC grid at this location for the transition at around 3:00 UTC on Thursday morning. This will be shortly after the end of day statistics finish running. That is about 36 hours from the time that I write this.

Between now and the shutdown, some projects may run out of work. This is part of minimizing the complexity of the transfer. Once we have confirmed that the environment is stable at the new location, we will load work back in for all projects that have work for us. At that time things should be back to normal operations.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/forums/wcg/viewthread?thread=22984

 

[muckshifter]

thanks for the info

 

[nivrip]

I suggest folks increase the work in their queues to cover this period

How do we do this Ady?

 

[Taffycat]

Thank you for the heads-up Ady

 

[Adywebb]

How do we do this Ady?

You can either login at WCG, go to My Grid>Device Manager and click the profile for your machine/s and scroll to the bottom where you have the Workunit cache setting and increase it to say 7 days extra work, or...

Within BOINC itself go to Advanced>Preferences>Network Usage and increase the 'Addditional work buffer' setting to 7.0 days and press 'OK'.......(this will overide all the WCG settings apart from the projects you want to crunch so make sure that all the other settings are what you want too )

 

[Ian]

Thanks for the heads up Ady

edit: I've made the thread a sticky.

 

[Adywebb]

Thanks Ian


Just got the email from WCG - looks like its now saying the site will be down for 48 hours - whether that is the same for the work unit servers etc I'm not exactly sure - so my advice for amassing a work queue of 7 days may be a tad too extreme

Also note the bit about the possible Firewall approval

Technical Advisory: World Community Grid Moving Servers to a New Location

World Community Grid is getting brand new equipment and relocating its servers to a new IBM location. There is no action required on your part but we wanted you to be aware of the move.

The move starts on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 in the evening (approximately 0300 UCT January 8, 2009) and will require us to bring down the website for up to 48 hours.

During the downtime, your computer will be able to continue processing work units for your favorite World Community Grid research project. Your computer will know when the servers are back up and will then continue normal processing.

The move may cause your firewall to prompt you about World Community Grid. If this happens, please re-approve your computers access to World Community Grid.

 

[Urmas]

... so my advice for amassing a work queue of 7 days may be a tad too extreme

Maybe... but I fail to see any harm in that procedure.

 

[guest_9323wk]

Thanks for the heads up. I will increase the work units.

Cheers

 

[nivrip]

Is it too late???


I've been into BOINC and changed to 7 days but in Messages I'm told there is no work available for any of my crunching projects.

 

[Adywebb]

I'm getting that message for FAAH and Cancer - but its still sending me Human Proteome Folding work as an alternative....so perhaps check your projects settings and select to recieve alternative work if none of your selected projects are available?

 

[nivrip]

Boinc has gone completely mad.


Despite telling me that there is no work to be had, including Human Proteome Folding, it has now sent me a huge pile of HPF tasks that will see me through till 2010.

So, crunching can continue.

 

[Anon_F]

Cheers Ady.
Now got enough work to be going on with.

Nivrip, dont brag about how much WCG work you have ready!
Just get on with it all!

 

[V_R]

WCG Server Move and Temporary Shutdown 0300Hrs 8th January 2009..

Spot the deliberate mistake .

 

[Adywebb]

Where?

 

[V_R]

lol, damn you editing my post!!

 

[Adywebb]

 

[Adywebb]

Upgrade Completed - Please Resume Normal Service

Looks like everything is pretty much back to normal - but there will no doubt be a few teething problems for a short while

 

[Anon_F]

Cheers for the update Ady.

 

[itsme]

Mine working FINE