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December 30, 2010
Slow Server Response Times This Week
Some of you have probably noticed some severe system slow downs this week after we'd rolled over to our new dedicated servers over the Christmas weekend. We've been working long hours to try to sort this issue out and even tripled the memory of the main web-server on Tuesday night in an attempt to cure the intermittent problems that people have been seeing. Sadly this hasn't fixed up the issue. We're trying one more thing tonight, which is to move all the databases containing your time clock data onto the same computer that serves up the web pages you see. This will remove any delays and potential DNS lookup problems between our different computers and hopefully fix things up.
If this doesn't work then this weekend we'll move the entire system back to our old (and as it turns out) pretty reliable hosting solution and work on these problems in the background while you all get on with your business. I must offer up many, many apologies for the issues you've been having and thank all of you for bearing with us during what is turning out to be a difficult time. Please be assured we're doing all we can to ensure that normal service will resume shortly.
Posted by markn at 10:23 AM
December 26, 2010
Online Time Clock MTS Downtime 25-26 December 2010
Online Time Clock MTS will be down for several hours on 25 December 2010 as we transition from our current shared hosting environment to a 100% dedicated hosting service. In fact we'll be hosting the site across 5 different servers, one to serve up the website, 3 to run the various databases the system uses, and one server dedicated to data backups and to provide a quick fail over machine in case one of the others crashes or goes down.
The actual changeover to the new systems will only take a few hours but where the majority of the delay (may) occur is waiting for the DNS records to propagate. Basically this means the computers all around the world that help distribute the 'global address book' that matches up domain names (like www.timeclockmts-online.com) to the server computers that host the actual websites can take a little while to update. It could be anywhere from an hour or two for you to see the site on the new server to a couple of days.
Of course we apologize for any lack of availability during this time so we ask you to be patient, the system should be available in time for the new work week.
Posted by markn at 9:41 AM
