Modern Vespa

As I hope you all have noticed by now, there is a big notice at the top of the page announcing server maintenance. That's happening tonight, if it wasn't clear.

The database instance we are using (MySQL 5.7) is slated for end-of-life in October 2023, at which point Amazon AWS will no longer support it. Rather than wait until the last minute, I am going to try to be proactive and move to a new database -- hopefully to one with many years of support life ahead.

So in about three hours from now, I'll be taking the MV database offline, making a final copy, and migrating from MySQL 5.7 to MariaDB 10.6. I'll also be moving from an Intel processor to an ARM processor in the process.

I've done a dry run of this conversion, and it went reasonably well. I noticed a single database query that was much less efficient on the new database, but was able to apply some key hinting that brought it into line with the older database. There may still be more of those issues, but the mainstream functions of the forum -- the pages we all visit the most -- seem to be behaving identically to the old database.

The whole process will take about an hour, but I am ballparking. If all goes well, it will be less than an hour. If I have to do the conversion more than once, it could go longer. Hopefully not.

Counting down...

Forward!

T minus 60 minutes and counting.

Some behind-the-scenes details about the database upgrade.

As we are moving to a database running MariaDB, I have selected a naming scheme for the servers. There will likely be several of them over time, and they each need a unique name. They will be named after famous people named Maria.

For the first test-run server, I chose the name mvdb-montessori, after Maria Montessori, an educator from Italy.



The next server, barring a sudden change of plans, will be named mvdb-zandbang, after Maria Zandbang, an equestrian from Poland.



I have no idea who I will use after that. Hopefully it will be at least a year before I need another server name.

T minus 15 minutes and counting.

T minus 5 minutes and counting.

See you on the other side...

And we're back!

Other than the fact that I wasted the first 15 minutes doing something that wasn't actually necessary, the migration to a new database went very well.

Thank you Jess for all your hard work, it's nice to see MV back online.

I figured no place on earth was safe so took to the sky for the duration.

Yeah, what he said. Thanks for all.

Thank you, Jess for providing this forum for owners and other fans of
Vespas for almost 2 decades now.