Over the past week Outskirts Press has been involved in a major hardware upgrade for both our file servers and our website servers. I wish I could say that process went off without a hitch, but as anyone who has been involved in a hardware and data migration of this magnitude would tell you, the likelihood of it going off without any complications are pretty slim.
Since the new servers were in a different physical location, we had to physically move the data, which required a time intensive process of actually copying it from the “old” server to a temporary migration drive, confirming the successful copying of the data, uploading it to the “new” server and then reconfirming the successful uploading of the data again. It was a 4-step process that literally took days, considering the amount of data that we were moving. And here’s where we ran into a hiccup. The data did not successfully upload to the new server the first time we attempted the data migration.
The security and maintenance of our author’s data was the most important component to us, which is why we engaged in several different double-checks throughout the process. And when one of those checks failed, we opted to be “safe rather than sorry” to ensure all our author data was maintained properly, and exactly right. As a result, we lost 4 days in this migration and needed to begin anew with a different temporary drive.
Our authors have been extremely patient with us through this week-long hardware upgrade. Our website, by contrast, was only down for a very brief period of time early Sunday morning. As a result, it was probably difficult to tell that such a massive technical undertaking was taking place at all.
The good news is that all servers and back-up redundant drives are now running optimally, and much, much faster than their predecessors.
Overall, this hardware upgrade will result in a better experience for our authors in the long run. Their experience on our website will be even better and their production timeframes should be even faster. It’s never “fun” having to confront a hardware upgrade, but among all the problems any business faces on a daily basis, the one that is caused by being successful is among the “better” problems to have. I thank all our authors and all our production personnel for that.
President of Outskirts Press 