Status of the database upgrade

As I told you about a few days ago, we closed down the site for a few hours this morning to upgrade the disk space on our database server.

Our cautious shutdown procedure went according to plan - but when our systems administrator got access to tinker with the server, it proved to be impossible to reconfigure the machine to use the new disks, even with access to the RAID BIOS. As usual, our ageing servers prove to uncooperative.

After scratching our heads for a while, we decided to regroup and start the site up again. The restart procedure also went without any major problems.

The morning was spent discussing alternative solutions, and we have now come up with a Plan B, C, and D.

We are going to send our systems administrator back to the hosting centre again on Monday morning, this time armed with a suitcase filled with various tools, which we hope will convince the server to start cooperating with us.

More info will follow once the plan has been finalised.