J3di You underestimate the power of the Dark Side.

UK Server Downtime

Due to RapidSwitch encountering unforeseen problems with their router software upgrade last night, there have been large bouts of downtime over the last 24 hours when the UK server has been unreachable.

We have set up a secondary/backup DNS service which will store a copy of the main DNS server's records, so that you are still able to resolve the US and DE server's IP addresses during any future downtime.

In addition, we have removed the UK server from the DNS round-robin for irc.J3di.org, and are also redirecting the records for the UK server to point at the US server until this crisis has abated.

For more frequent (and always available) updates, you might like to follow @J3di_IRC, @Fr3d_org or even @RapidSwitch on Twitter.

We'd also like to pass on RapidSwitch's profuse apologies for the disruption caused by this downtime.

Emergency Maintenance @ RS – Will Affect UK Server

We have just been notified by RapidSwitch, whose datacenter Fr3d uses to host the UK server, that it is likely that there will be a loss of connectivity on their network this evening at around 23:00 UK time.

This is due to RapidSwitch having to perform emergency network maintenance:

The maintenance is to perform an emergency upgrade of Cisco software. [...] The Cisco TAC team have diagnosed a fault with the software on the router in the form of a memory leak. Cisco has supplied us with a new version of the software for the router which will fix the memory leak and slow performance.

- RapidSwitch Support

They say that this maintenance should take no longer than 45 minutes, and that they will do all they can to speed everything up and reduce the maintenance time.

To maintain network cohesion (as much as possible), the DE server will automatically failover its link to the US server in the event it loses its connection, and cannot reconnect, to the UK server.

Update @ 01:50 25/09: RapidSwitch seem to be back online now. No word from them yet as to why the maintenance took so long; we will update this post when we know more.

Scheduled Downtime for UK Server Datacenter Network

There will be two short periods of time next week when it will not be possible to connect to the UK server.

This is due to the datacenter that hosts the server needing to perform maintenance work on their core router.

The times for this maintenance are as follows:

• 02:00 BST on 21st July, for ~20 minutes: To "upgrade the IOS firmware"
• 02:00 BST on 22nd July, for ~30 minutes: To "create a high availability cluster"