FellowSites will be migrating to a new server beginning at 12:00am PDT / 3:00am EDT / 0700 UTC on Wednesday, April 23, 2008.

We’re performing this migration because our current server is running an outdated operating system and was initially configured with drive partitioning that has proved unwieldy. The new server is running on the latest version of Redhat Enterprise Linux and the partitioning has been improved.

Additionally, we’ve upgraded the following services on the new server:

We’ve got DNS refresh intervals throttled down to mere minutes, so the few sites we’ve already migrated were being served from the new location nearly immediately after they were moved. However, not all worldwide DNS servers honor such requested refresh rates, so your mileage may vary. To be on the safe side, plan on a period of 48 hours for DNS to propagate worldwide.

If you have any sort of dynamic content on your site such as a blog or wiki, you may wish to lock your database during the migration, if possible. If you have any concerns about your site(s) being migrated, please contact us to discuss special arrangements, including, if necessary, rescheduling the migration of your account.

FYI, our IP address will be changing from 208.53.37.202 to 208.53.37.200 and the fully qualified domain name for the server will go from fsserver1.fellowsites.org to fsserver2.fellowsites.org. If you’re using either the IP address or the FQDN for any reason, be aware that you’ll have to begin using the new IP/FQDN after the migration.

Note: if you signed up for an account within the last couple of weeks, you are already on the new server, so this message doesn’t apply to you.