OSArch server migration
Hey all! I've been reviewing my infrastructure and the dedicated server that OSArch (news/events, forum, wiki) runs on is well over a decade old. It's been incrementally upgraded on Gentoo, but gone are the days when that server would be a 24/7 workhorse running all sorts of services (I used to run a web dev company).
Long story short, it's overkill, it's old, so I think it's time to migrate OSArch to just regular shared web hosting. This is significantly cheaper (which is all good since the Liberapay funding which used to go to this has also dwindled significantly - but it'll still be enough to cover it). It also massively decreases maintenance. The stuff we run is also very standard (PHP + MySQL).
The only con is that if we decide to host more custom magic on OSArch (e.g git host), I'm no longer able to say "sure I've got space for that" without hesitation. It'll now be a slightly longer conversation of "OK, what resources / environment does this need" before setting it up.
I'm also looking to retire the nameserver, which means that there will come a point where nameservers will need to be pointed at a new host, and ideally the nameserver entries are handled by the registrar rather than our own nameserver. Ping @dimitar - this either means you need to make a bunch of changes, or alternatively if you transfer the ownership to me (I'm on Namecheap) I can make the changes.
Comments
Happy to make whatever changes are needed to the domain. I'm pretty comfortable with adjusting txt records, which is what I assume needs to be changed.
Probably would make sense to channel some OSArch funds to help pay for this infrastructure.
As mentioned before, I think osarch should host their own gitea/forgejo instance. Again, happy to move https://hub.openingdesign.com/ under the steering committee's stewardship/maintenance and OSArch branding.
@theoryshaw is this a capital or operational cost or both?
No clue, but after doing this inquiry, to do some learnin', I would say operational. :)
Indeed this is mostly operational costs. The Liberapay donations are enough to cover the new costs of shared hosting (which are much, much cheaper) so until that runs out, no need to get more from the OSArch OSC.
What this means it that I'll most likely lock the forum (read only) early next week (speculatively Monday). This'll provide a short grace period for us to migrate the database and latest files. Then after that, @dimitar will update the DNS records. DNS takes a bit of time to propagate, so there may be a period where some users will see the new site, and some will see the old locked site. We will also need to setup new SSL certificates too.
If you set the TTL to 60 or something low now, then when you do the switch in a couple of days the caches will have flushed out the old records.
Currently the TTL is 21600, ie. six hours, which is way too big for a migration to go smoothly (though it is cool that I can run
digwhile underground in the Seoul metro!)@brunopostle that's excellent advice! I've updated it to 15minutes.
Happy to say that it's now been a week since we've migrated servers and everything seems to be going well :)