New server looks good (plus a surprise!)

So far, LyricWiki has been running pretty well with the new server (our 5th server, named “Cochise“) set up with the rest of them.  I’ve moved the API completely to that server which takes a good deal of the stress off of the site itself.

The site has been pretty fast since the new server has been up.  However, there have been occasional slow-patches, and looking at the CPU usage on the main webserver for the site – it’s definitely still not “calm”.

Surprise 1

So here’s a fun surprise: today I ordered another server!

For the first time in a looong time, we can hopefully stay ahead of demand instead of suffering for a couple of weeks until it’s unbearable and we’re forced to upgrade.

Surprise 2

W00t! This is an uplifting blogpost… lots of surprises! Anyway: the second surprise is that starting in October, I’m going to be decreasing the time I spend at my day-job by 40% so I’ll only be in the office 3 days per week. That’ll give me two whole days more each week where I can work on Motive Force products like LyricWiki. This should help things become much more stable very quickly.

Well, that was an abnormally enjoyable post for this blog – which usually just announces outages! The site still isn’t totally upgraded (because the weekend ended before I could make all of the extensions work), so I have to run back to that. I took snapshots of a bunch of performance stats before and after, so I’ll post those sometime soon.

Thanks for your patience during those past few weeks. Hopefully we’re in a whole new era for the site!

Setting up new server right now

The new server exists, I’m setting it up and am hoping I can have it all done before I go to sleep.

There is a decent amount of stuff that needs to be done before it’s all working. If you’re technical, or just like watching lists as they are being completed… I’ll be tracking the upgrade here.

I’ll also be making occasional updates to the @lyricwiki twitter account.

The new server will be another Apache server and is named “Cochise“. That is the name of the last great Apache chief, and also the inspriation for the song Cochise by Audioslave.

There will be downtime for an unknown length of time tonight. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum, but the site is so slow it’s practically down anyway.

PS: Special thanks to our awesome webhost for getting the new box here & set up quickly!