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Scheduled Website Maintenance 4/18 – 4/19

Published

April 17, 2015

| Information Systems | Automatically Archived on 4/21/2015

This Post has been archived and its content might be outdated. If you are looking for recent content, please check this Department's Homepage.

The town’s website will be undergoing a migration this weekend 4/18-4/19. The website will be moved from the current Windows server to a new and faster Linux server.

Expected Downtime

The expected downtime for this maintenance is minimal, about an hour. The following actions will be taken by our developer

  • Verify that the new server is configured correctly and has the latest production version of the website
  • Lock the administration interface to prevent critical data from being entered
  • Perform a backup of the database
  • Cut the new server’s database over to the production database
  • Configure the current server to load balance requests for the main town site and Goodnow library’s site to the new Linux server.
  • Verify that the new configuration is working
  • Remove unnecessary modules from the web server
  • Perform a reboot of the Windows server
  • Unlock the administration interface

Migration Details

The migration will significantly improve website performance by allowing us to use the following leading edge technologies.

  • HipHop (HHVM) developed by FaceBook, HHVM compiles the PHP code the website runs on down to C++ which can improve performance 10x in some cases.  We have observed substantial website performance improvements when running on HHVM
  • Alternative PHP Cache (APC) is a caching tool that will replace our current WinCache setup.  APC is significantly faster and much more stable and integrates directly with HHVM.
  • NGINX will be used as the web server in the new Linux environment.

The migration will also allow us to clean up our existing Windows server. IIS, which is our current front-end server and will still be used, but only for load balancing purposes to direct all web traffic to the correct servers.  We will be removing most of the extensions currently enabled on IIS that have been slowing it down, including the PHP CGI (Fast-CGI) module which has crashed the server on several occasions.

Finally the migration also includes an upgrade to WordPress 4.1.1 and several plugin upgrades.

Contact

If you have any questions or comments about this migration please contact webmaster@sudbury.ma.us

 

 

 

Event Details

Event Start: Saturday, April 18, 2015 (12:00 am)
Event End: Sunday, April 19, 2015 (11:00 pm) (Expected)
Location: Not specified; see notes.
Department: Information Systems
Notes: The town's website will be undergoing a migration this weekend 4/18-4/19. The website will be moved from the current Windows server to a new and faster Linux server.
Download: Download this event to add to calendar (.ics)

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