Ginka Server Migration: COMPLETE

[Tiernan]

Hello Everyone,

The staff at Armageddon is driven towards continuous improvement.  We are always looking for ways to improve the roleplay experience, minimize interruption, and allow players to enjoy themselves through their characters.  In the spirit of continuous improvement, I am pleased to announce that Armageddon will be migrating onto a hosted platform.

The machine which runs Armageddon has once again reached its limits and is overdue for a technology refresh.  Over the past year the staff has been discussing different options available for this upgrade.   Some of the key dimensions we looked at in our selection process were:  computing resources, system reliability, ease of administration, internet bandwidth, and cost.   Rest easy, we remain committed to keeping Armageddon free of charge.

Since the start of 2011 the staff has been working on testing and validating a Virtual Private Server (VPS) as a replacement for the aging ginka server.   A VPS is a hosted machine within a hosted virtual environment.   This is a tremendous step into the 21st century and the nebulous world of cloud computing for us.   It is definitely a long way from Armageddon's humble beginnings at the University of Iowa, and a big departure from physically hosting the machine in the basement of someone's house over an ISDN or DSL connection.  We believe that a hosted VPS will be able to provide larger bandwidth, fewer network issues, and improve the overall stability and accessibility of the game.

In the course of the next week or two the IP address for the ginka server will be changing.   We will be doing a DNS update so those of you who use the hostname ought to be able to find us once DNS caches are updated.   For those who use our IP address directly, we will announce the new IP address on the GDB forum.

Thank you,
Tiernan

[Nyr]

The migration will start at approximately 10:00 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, February 15.

The game will be down during this time; you will not be able to connect.

We expect to have the game back up no later than 4:00 PM Eastern time on Wednesday, February 16 (unless something drastically goes wrong).
We will post meaningful updates as warranted.

[Saikun]

The migration may well start earlier tonight, so don't make any big plans after 8PM EST or so.

-S

[Nyr]

Migration has started.

[Tiernan]

As we're testing things, you may find systems coming up and going away, like the web page, the game, or whatever. Please hold off on doing anything until we say it's up for sure. Otherwise, you might lose data or screw something up.

-S

Anything before the "All clear" notice is at your own risk and we assume no responsibility.

[Tiernan]

Hello folks,

You'll be happy to know that everything appears to have survived the migration.   We're going to go ahead and open the game up to players now, with the caveat that we may need to take it down and fix any unexpected errors which crop up.  Hopefully we won't have any issues and we'll let things play out, so to speak.

The new IP address is:  209.159.155.236

Game on!

Tiernan