Moved a server from one building to another with zero downtime

Re:Moved a server from one building to another with zero dow... by xyst on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @08:17AM (#24059961)

Why wouldn’t cloning the VMs to a second server, then split the traffic between the primary and secondary server work? Once traffic to the second server is confirmed, you could shut off the second server and haul it off to the new location.

I would probably still charge a much higher rate since the owner was an arse, but at least you would get back your 7-8 hours.

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Re:Moved a server from one building to another with zero dow... by viraptor on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @09:00AM (#24060301)

You're making assumptions about what's running on the servers. Let's say it's a VoIP conference server with a shared dedicated room - effectively you have an ongoing session shared between multiple connection and you cannot stop it. Or you have stateful local processing so you can't "split the traffic". Or a number of other limitations...

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Re:Moved a server from one building to another with zero dow... by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @09:24AM (#24060488)

Not all services can be load balanced in this way

Live migration of VMs would have been a better option, which was brought up in the reddit comments and dismissed because HyperV live migration is spotty. While I'd have to agree with that assessment, it isn't so spotty that what they actually did was less risky.

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Re:Moved a server from one building to another with zero dow... by blcArmadillo on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @08:21AM (#24059987)

It sounds like there was no second server.

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Re:Moved a server from one building to another with zero dow... by morphogenesis on Wednesday August 05, 2020 @09:33AM (#24060553)

Database inconsistency for one thing. This works for frontend web services but how do you reconcile the writes between the two servers?

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