
david at kineticode
Jan 28, 2010, 10:20 AM
Post #11 of 15
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On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:12 AM, Fletcher, Michael wrote: > On Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:38 AM David E. Wheeler wrote: > >> Wow. That's just...crazy. I don't know whether to admire you or fear you. A little of both, perhaps. > > Hmmm, That's not very nice. I meant it as a complement. > We're trying to do several things at once with little or no impact on our editorial staff. > 1. Retire an old server that has no disk space and get onto a new server (vmware) > 2. Update Bricolage > 3. Build a new site > > With no disk space and a 24/7 news operation, it a difficult undertaking and I've done everything I can to insure a smooth transition for the users. Our DB and /comp and /burn are just too big to try and move it all to a new server and do an upgrade without significant downtime to the editorial staff. Even if we had the disk space, I would have had to move all the existing Templates and postpone the new site development until after the Bric update. With the approach I've taken, I was able to move all the "supporting" data and then we'll start SOAPing the stories and media from the old server to the new server (selectively) while we're developing the new site in the new Bric. > > I am aware of the risks involved in this approach, but I didn't see any other viable option under these circumstances. > > Can I ask how you would have approached this? I would have somehow got some external storage plugged into the thing, then run `make clone` from that external storage. No downtime at all for Bricolage. Then I would have unplugged the USB drive and plugged it into the new box and run `perl Makefile.PL && make && make install` from there. Complete clone of the existing installation with database fully in tact, all templates, stories, images, etc. But that's just me. If you don't need all the existing content and versions in the new installation, then maybe that would have been overkill. Quite a few people have thrown out their existing installs, setting up brand new Bricolage servers and copied over selected stuff from the old server via SOAP. You're the first I've heard of to selectively copy stuff from the database, however (did you use PostgreSQL's COPY feature? How awesome is that??). Best, David
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