[Ansteorra-announce] [Announcements] SCA.ORG INTERNET SERVERS TO UNDERGO UPGRADE

[LMOORE2122 at wi.rr.com]

SCA.ORG INTERNET SERVERS TO UNDERGO UPGRADE

On Sunday, 15 January 2006, the sca.org Internet servers will be taken 
offline temporarily to perform a major system upgrade. Beginning at 
approximately 4:00 a.m. US Central Time (10:00 GMT), and continuing 
until approximately noon US Central Time (18:00 GMT), various services 
will be inaccessible.

As stated in the announcement sent January 13, 2006, sca.org email 
addresses have experienced some severe performance problems recently 
due to technical issues on the sca.org mail server. Fortunately, we 
were already in the process of migrating to a new, faster server when 
these problems arose, and so we have accelerated the process of moving 
email accounts.

There will be a brief period when almost all sca.org services (web, 
mail, etc.) will be unavailable. During most of the scheduled outage, 
however, normal web pages on www.sca.org will continue to work. 
MEMBERS WILL NOT ABLE TO USE THE ONLINE MEMBERSHIP SYSTEM, NOR ORDER 
ITEMS THROUGH THE ONLINE STOCK CLERK PAGES, DURING THE OUTAGE. Please 
wait until Monday to use the web pages that perform financial 
transactions of any kind, or make sure your ordering is completed 
before the beginning of the scheduled outage.

The main focus of the upgrade is the email system and therefore that 
system will be offline for the greatest time. This includes all of the 
email lists at the corporate level such as announcements at sca.org, plus 
the corporate officer's sca.org email addresses.

All user accounts for the Known World Mail service, which offers email 
addresses in subdomains such as lady.sca.org, pelican.sca.org, 
archer.sca.org, and so on, will be moved to the new server during this 
scheduled outage. Most users will notice no changes other than that 
their account will work faster. A document will be published on the 
sca.org web site this weekend to explain what differences you might 
notice and what to do about problems that may occur.
 
During this weekend's transition period AND FOR A FEW DAYS AFTERWARD, 
users of Known World Mail will be able to send and receive mail but 
will not be able to update their personal preferences or order new 
accounts. The KWM account settings must be "frozen" for a few days to 
ensure that no data is lost during the move. You will be able to send 
and receive normally, but may not be able to change your password or 
modify signature blocks or other personalized features until later 
next week.
 
 The most noticeable change for most members of the populace is that 
all of the email lists (such as the director’s list) will now be 
located in a subdomain called "lists.sca.org". So for instance, the 
Directors address will now be "directors at lists.sca.org". For a while, 
the old list addresses will redirect to the new lists, but will auto-
reply to the sender as a reminder to update your address book. 
Likewise, the web pages that let you subscribe or unsubscribe the 
lists, change your subscription options, or view the archives, will 
automatically forward to their new addresses for a while.

This is a major transition, and though we hope to make it as trouble-
free as possible, it is unlikely that we will accomplish such a major 
change without some bumps along the road. We apologize in advance for 
any inconvenience this may cause, and we look forward to providing you 
with improved services once we have migrated to the new computer. 

It will be very helpful if those whose needs are not urgent could wait 
a couple of days to see if problems are resolved before submitting a 
new trouble report, since the chances are very good that someone else 
will have already reported the same problem. The more time we spend 
reading duplicate reports, the less time we have to actually fix the 
problem. We trust in each person's good judgment as to whether the 
problem needs to be fixed TODAY or can wait a day or two to see if 
someone else has already made us aware of it.

In the near future, we will also be moving the SCA's web site to the 
new server, and in the longer term, we are working on a design upgrade 
to offer improvements and new features.

Once again, thank you for your assistance with this matter.  We 
appreciate your patience while we improve the services available to 
our members.

In service to the SCA,
 
Scott Courtney, Chief Technical Officer, SCA Inc
(Maistor Iustinos Tekton called Justin)

 


Comments are strongly encouraged and can be sent to: 
SCA Inc.
Box 360789
Milpitas,  CA 95036

You may also email comments at sca.org or reply to this message.

This announcement is an official informational release by the Society for Creative Anachronism , Inc.  Permission is granted to reproduce this announcement in its entirety in newsletters, websites and electronic mailing lists.

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