Citrix XenServer 6.5 was released a few weeks ago and it offers significant performance improvements. We are currently running 6.2, the previous version. Here's a comparison chart of some of the improvements.



Citrix XenServer is the environment in which the HH and THG virtual machines (VM) are running.

Over the next couple of days I'm going to upgrade our XenServer installation to 6.5, this is going to involve the following steps.

* Setting up a new backup system for creating and storing VM snapshots on a remote server.
(Currently our backup system operates on the database, website and game servers, rather than the whole VM.

* Researching the safest/easiest/least messy method of upgrading to 6.5. This will boil down to either;

a) wiping the server, installing 6.5 and then dropping the latest VM snapshot backups on to it.

b) upgrading the current 6.2 installation.

All of this is going to be new territory for me.

I think it's best for me to do this upgrade before investigating the ping issue relating to the TF2 servers.

A couple of points regarding the TF2 ping issue.

* It started out of the blue and after several weeks of trouble-free operation. This means it's not a capacity issue. It's not that the hardware and OS configuration that we have isn't suitable for the job.

* Pings spikes only seemed to occur on the TF2 servers (Edit: K3D tells me that the mumble server was affected too), whereas a ping log from the server to my home network for 12 hours stayed in the range of 13.6ms to 28.4ms during the period that people where experiencing ping spikes on the TF2 servers.

Without going into details, there isn't a feasible upgrade route for updating 6.2 to 6.5 with our current situation (no physical access, no SAN, remote network etc.)

So snapshots of the VMs will be made, the server wiped and 6.5 installed, and then the snapshots imported.

This is probably going to result in the best part of a days downtime.

Before doing this I'm going to have a few trial runs on a test server, if I can muster one together, so that I can figure out what is going to work best with regards to various VM image formats and the shuffling of data (130GB).

The actual upgrade is most likely to happen in the early part of next week. I'll avoid the weekend and start early on a weekday so that, with any luck, everything is back up and running by the evening.

p.s. Don't fret, upgrades, such as this, will be few and far between. 6.2 was released in June 2013. The timing of the release of 6.5 is just unfortunate, as it's so soon after our move.

In case of downtime:

THG have a backup TF2 server at 193.0.159.201:27045

For signup/info/questions on Fight Night, talk to me on Steam
We are using the serveme.tf system so no worries there

Holy shit, those improvements...

On Monday 9th March, the following maintenance will occur. Most things will be offline for approximately 9 hours.

Shutdown of HH website, mumble and all game servers
Shutdown of THG website, mumble and TF2 servers #1 & #2
Export of HH and THG virtual machines. (≈4 hours)
Installation of Citrix XenServer 6.5. (≈45 minutes)
Import of HH and THG virtual machines. (≈4 hours)
Upgrade XenTools (≈20 minutes)

You'll be able to track progress at http://gg.gg/serverupdate (bookmark this)

Good luck frog. See you on the other side...

Well that was a looooong day, and time I didn't really have.

Anyway, here we are again... Let's hope that neither of the servers drop out after 20 minutes with a network issue that is beyond my current knowledge of Citrix XenServer 6.5.

FF2 people, please chill out with unnecessary jobs.

This was all just your cunning plan to discretely remove Llamara's map thread wasn't it.

Convenient that my 1500 word post on the aesthetics of that shoutbox is nowhere to be seen!

Good job!

Don't burn yourself out, Jase.

Sam, on one side that's funny, but on the other side I've got people that think I did it on purpose and are pissed off/upset and PMing about it.

Shheeesh... Yes, like I am going to spend another 2 and a bit hours waiting for a new VM to export for the sake of half a dozen posts.

A word to the hasty, myself included.
Just because something is back up and running, doesn't mean it's all working, or tested, or anything. It's just up.

Touch wood, the boat is staying afloat this time.