This post is to track the progress of the vbCity migration to the new platform. Our test upgrades and database conversion of the ~700,000 posts has taken close to 24 hours so the actual move will take a little over 24 hours.

The site will be down and redirect to the Offline page for the entire duration on the upgrade.

I will be posting the milestone updates and progress on this page. You can follow me on Twitter (@SergeB) for the real time status updates. I will be using hash tag #vbcity to separate the migration related tweets from the others, although I would not expect to have non related tweets over the next 24 or so hours :)

I have also setup a page on this site that pull the latest tweets with the hash tag #vbcity for those who are not on Twitter - http://sergeb.com/blog/twitter-ticker-vbcity.aspx

I'm about ready to start, so wish me luck and smooth upgrade like the last 3 test upgrades I've done recently!

Feel free to chime in either on Twitter (but remember to use the #vbcity hash tag) or post a comment here - will help me to feel that you are doing the upgrade with me :)

Status Updates

Current status - we are LIVE on the new server and the new platform - check it out - http://vbcity.com

2009-12-10

9:45pm - And we are LIVE on the new server and the new platform - check it out - http://vbcity.com - The site temporary shows as cs.vbcity.com - this is for a day or two until the vbcity.com DNS changes propagate across the net. I will post a list of things that are yet to be worked on over the next few days but the move is complete!!! :)
9:20pm - Done-done with the site and the database. Redirecting DNS to the new site.
6:00pm - The forums are done, started post search indexing job, now bunch of smaller fixes/tweaks
3:30pm - Tweaking and moving forums around
11:30am - Have done some index optimization. Converting attachments - this will run for about an hour while I'm off to a lunch/meeting offsite
9:30am - The new site is live under a temp URL - moving on to the manual configuration phase
7:30am - I'm up and, oh, good news, Posts just finished converting! We are now few hours ahead of schedule! Will continue after a quick breakfast. 
1:20am - Time for the "scheduled" sleep while Posts are being converted. If I'm lucky the Post conversion will finish by the time I get up. Next update is in the morning, till then…
1:00am - Users converted, now the longest part of the conversion - Posts - will take somewhere between 7-15 hrs
12:30am - Target database is ready, converting user accounts

2009-12-09

11:30pm - Preparing the target database
11:10pm - Old database backed up, moved to new server and restored. Now cleaning it up - removing users not active in the last 2 years - going from ~250K down to 59K members
10:00pm - vbCity.com site has gone Offline for the upgrade
9:30pm - the Offline page is completed, will be taking the site down soon
7:00 pm - Working on the Offline page