World Community Grid - Upgrading Server Software

[ZipSpeed]

For those crunching WCG, you may want to increase your work buffer. That or start a second project. They say the upgrade will take 6.5 hours but we all know things like these always go awry.

Extended Outage: Upgrading Server Software on March 6th from 14:30 UTC - 21:00 UTC
World Community Grid uses the open source BOINC infrastructure to support the distributed processing of work performed by the computers provided by our volunteers. We are going to be updating this code to the latest version of the software on March 6th starting at 14:30 UTC.

This upgrade involves a number of changes. As a result, we are going to temporarily stop the system and take full backups before performing the upgrade. This will require us to stop things for up to 6.5 hours.

We appreciate your patience while we perform this change.

After the upgrade:

1. All hosts start as having to proof again to be a reliable cruncher... your Zero redundant tasks will run in quorum 2 for a period of time till reproved.
2. The credit system will be re-balancing according better performance management and contribution algorithms with anticipated surprises of yet unknown outcome.
3. Messaging with client may see new functional event logging being recorded for BOINC 5/6/7-alpha contributors at WCG.
4. Any other related stuff... connection issues etc.

Stay cool and dont forget to buffer up a bit, and not 1 hour before the event... the actual times of start and stop have not always been exact UT ;O)... last large planned outage started an hour earlier!

Those that can/will, set your client offline, and watch the Known Issues and BOINC Support forum thread on developments. The forums are not planned to go offline, just BOINC.

And as the famous butcher in Dad's Army, please don't panic at 21:02 UTC, if things do not come back presto pronto.

 

[petrusbroder]

Thanks for the heads-up. Upgrade ongoing!
Plenty of WUs in buffer ...

 

[ZipSpeed]

Another outage on March 8:

Extended Outage: Upgrading Filesystem Software on March 8th from 14:45 UTC - 19:00 UTC
We will be installing the latest updates for the IBM General Parallel File System software that we use. During this time, the World Community Grid (BOINC) clients will not be able to upload or download files nor will they be able to report completed results or fetch new work.

The website and forums will be available during this work.

We apologize for the disruption.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Always seem to have 12-14 hrs queued up.

Turtles are not greedy

 

[ZipSpeed]

Update regarding today's server upgrades:

Re: Extended Outage: Upgrading Server Software on March 6th from 14:30 UTC - 21:00 UTC
We have completed the database backup and installed the new software. Unfortunately, the changes to the database are taking longer than expected. There is a chance that this outage may last longer than originally planned.

 

[wayliff]

I saw there will be another outage...
Extended Outage: Upgrading Filesystem Software on March 15th from 14:45 UTC - 19:00 UTC

This seems to be the same March 8th upgrade and it got moved.

 

[ZipSpeed]

Thanks for the heads up.