All being well (avoiding any last minute virtual spanners) tonight we’ll complete the last stage of our server upgrade. 

For the past two and a half years we’ve been running on Windows servers, the same technology used by the other BMC sites. Although Windows isn’t the native environment on which to run DSpace, it is supported and we’ve done a fair amount of work to improve that support along the way. But now our time with Windows is coming to an end and we’re moving onto a nice shiny newly configured set of Debian Linux servers. 

The move is one further aspect of the current re-architecture of the Open Repository service. In bringing the operating system on which we run the web applications (the repositories) themselves into line with the native DSpace configuration we reduce the amount of support time required to improve the running of some of the functionality as well as reducing the amount of time required to reconfigure the applications during upgrades and patch fixes.  It also means that we’re unlikely to suffer from some of the recurring problems we’ve had such as disappearing statistics, email alerts not to mention that nasty server crash we experienced back in May.

The old servers will be taken down this evening about midnight, the applications and file stores copied across to the new environment and the final configuration changes made.  All sites should be available again early tomorrow morning.  There’ll be the odd bit of expected tinkering required but it shouldn’t affect the availability of the sites. Once the move has been completed we’ll be back up to full strength on the hardware front so please ensure you let me know immediately if you experience any problems with your sites over the next few weeks as everything settles down into the new set up.