imperialcollegeunion.org will be unavailable on the morning of Thursday 15 February between 8:00 and 10:00. This is to facilitate migration of the main site database to our new server platform.
eActivities will not be affected by this work.
Why is this happening?
Our current server platform has been in operation since 2012 when the current version of the website was launched. Since then we've seen a substantial increase in traffic to our site - there were 89% more visits to the site in the last three months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2012! We are now operating at the limits of the current platform's capability, which has been impacting on the performance and reliability of the site, particularly during periods of high activity on the site.
To address this we've been working on a new server platform to replace the servers currently hosting imperialcollegeunion.org, eVoting, Room Requests, and Imperial Award, along with a few internal systems such as our issue tracking system. The new platform will provide greater performance for all these sites and a much more modern software environment to facilitate future modernisation work on these sites.
How will the site be affected?
This Thursday we're carrying out the largest piece of migration work, which is to migrate the website's main database to the new platform. To do this we unfortunately need to take the site completely offline while we export the database, transfer it to the new platform, re-import it, and test the site operates correctly with the database in its new location. We'll also be taking the opportunity to reconfigure the way the current platform handles incoming web requests to facilitate the migration of the website code itself to the new platform in a few week's time. After the work is complete, there should be improvements to the site's stability and some improvements to performance.
Will there be any further disruption after this?
The next phase of work will be to transfer the site's code and redirecting incoming traffic to the new platform. Once this Thursday's work is complete we anticipate being able to do this without needing further downtime on the site. Migration of eVoting will take place after the Leadership Elections 2018 are over. A small amount of downtime may be required on other sites such as Room Requests, which will be scheduled to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum. eActivities operates on its own infrastructure and will not be affected by this migration programme.
Update 15 February
We've now completed this upgrade work ahead of schedule. Thank you for your patience.
