Crosscut Status

Site briefly inaccessible

This morning we had a node failure in the web app tier which resulted in several minutes of "server not accessible" messages for our readers. I've switched in a replacement node and now I am performing an autopsy on the old node.

Current status: all systems go

The Switch

This morning Chuck Taylor and I are going to be bringing up a new Yesler server on EC2, pouring all of the data from the current Crosscut.com over into it, and then switching DNS over so that everyone will be pointed to the new server instead of the old one.

There won't be a lot of visible change, but the entire foundation of the site will be replaced, including the editorial tools, the ad server, and the engine which renders the HTML to your browser.

This post will be updated as things progress, so if things go awry check here for the details.

8:16AM - Taking the final snapshot of the database and files from the old servers and pouring them into Yesler.
8:40AM - Pour complete and checked. Chuck is creating a front page layout and I'm importing ads.
10:24AM - All data is in the new system, the front page is ready, the ads are loaded, and now we're just doing a final check before switching DNS.
10:50AM - DNS has been switched and the old server will automatically redirect you to the new IP#. So, until your DNS records update you'll see a site URL like so: http://75.101.144.159/. After DNS has fully propagated you'll just see the same old "crosscut.com". It can take some remote DNS services as many as 24 hours to get the updates, but almost everyone in the Pacific NW should be updated within the next few hours.
11:28AM - At this point we're just watching the logs and server statistics to make sure that everything is running smoothly. We're seeing a lot of search crawlers going through our new URL structures, which is exciting (well, to nerds anyway).

At this point I'm going to call the switch complete and any new status updates will have their own post on this blog.

Crosscut.com is dead. Long live Crosscut.com!