Hi, On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 10:11:25AM -0000, bitfolk(a)pjlewis.org wrote: No I'm afraid not. There are 6 hosts to work on and I'll start about 13.30 GMT. I expect it will take 2-4 hours in total. They will be suspended to disk and then restored afterwards so to them it will be similar to a networking outage. Suspend/restore hasn't been 100% reliable in the past however so you may want to ensure that your VPS boots with all services you need running starting from boot, just in case. Also when suspend/restore does work it tends to play havoc with the clock causing ntpd to give up time syncing. So you may want to log in when it's back to fix the clock and restart ntpd if necessary. Nagios can monitor your ntpd if you ask for it. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB

Hi Paul, On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 12:07:10PM -0000, bitfolk(a)pjlewis.org wrote: Domain config cannot change on resume since it hasn't been destroyed and created again. Also I hadn't intended to immediately give the extra RAM because one of the servers (corona) is already maxed out for RAM so will need some of its customers balanced across the others. So, most customers will get their RAM increase within a week of the maintenance I would say. Some customers on corona will need their VPS moved (reboot + ~10 mins downtime) before they can get it. After I've contacted you to let you know that the upgrade has taken place you will need to shutdown and boot again at your convenience to see the extra RAM. At this stage it is looking like an increase of 120M will be easily possible. I had initially hoped to give 240M, and am buying enough RAM to make this technically possible, but it would bring the usage too close to maximum for my liking. I'm going to be cautious and leave open the possibility of another increase mid way through 2009 instead. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB

Hi folks, On Fri, Dec 05, 2008 at 06:10:03PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote: I should have confirmed sooner, but here is a reminder that this work is going ahead on Sunday 11th January starting around 13:00 GMT. Unfortunately, my preparatory tests indicate that it is not possible to suspend a domain with one version of Xen and then successfully restore it with a later one, at least not between the version in use and the version we need to move to. A Xen upgrade is necessary because the newer kernels that ship with more recent Linux distributions just do not work with Xen 3.0.x as present in Debian Etch, used by Bitfolk. Without an upgrade, you would be stuck using Debian Etch 2.6.18 era kernels for the foreseeable future. Therefore I am afraid this upgrade will entail a full shutdown / boot for all customers. The other major reason for this work is to max out the servers with RAM for a planned RAM increase later in the month. This is going ahead; it will be a 120M increase for all paying customers (except a few special cases who are already aware). I'm not able to confirm exactly when this will be happening, but it should be very soon after the hardware work is done. I want to advertise the new plans on the web site but I won't do it until existing customers have started to be upgraded. Some have asked why they cannot have the extra RAM on the day, saving them one reboot. The original easy answer to that was that it's not possible to alter a Xen domain's RAM or block devices without restarting it. That obviously no longer applies, but there are other reasons why I can't do this. Primarily, the logistical reason is that I do not really want around 200 VPSes to boot into a new configuration while I am on the data centre floor. Even though the config change for extra RAM is obviously trivial, this is too risky for me. Secondly, two of the servers are already full enough with RAM that there will not be capacity for every VPS on them to grow by 120M. Some customers will need to be moved from those servers first. Thirdly, doing this involves changes to administrative details such as who has which plan. Not every customer is eligible for this upgrade, so not just a case of editing the description of every plan. :) I have been very busy planning the other aspects of this work and have only ever planned for a gradual upgrade of individual VPSes after the day of the work. So sorry, I am not able to offer the RAM increase immediately and can't do any special favours for people to get them that. If you are in dire need of this extra RAM, by all means drop an email to support(a)bitfolk.com to that effect and I will make sure to put you at the front of the queue. If you do this then it's quite likely that you will get the upgrade on the same night, or the next day. Finally, some have asked if it will be possible to downgrade since they do not need the extra RAM. It is not my intention to provide a package smaller than 240M after the upgrades. Anyone who wants to downgrade to a 240M plan will be welcome to do so once their current contract has finished. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB

Hi Alex, On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 11:49:22PM +0000, Alexander Mann wrote: As part of the host's shutdown procedure, all of the VPSes normally suspend to disk, but I will be overriding that to be a clean shutdown instead. So no one need do anything, although people may wish to ensure that all their services they expect to be running do start properly on boot. Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB

Thanks for all your hard work, Andy! It's much appreciated. Graham