The growth of LibGuides has been nothing short of amazing, but the best part is that we are just getting started! New libraries are signing up every day, so the current statistics (300 libraries, 5000 librarians using the system, 11,500 guides created with 70,000 subject pages) will look like small potatoes 6 months from now. To ensure the smooth growth of our community, and to be able to handle the increasead load we are upgrading the LibGuides server infrastructure.
After we stopped drooling over the specs of the new servers (the latest dual quad-core Intel cpus, 4 gb of ram, powerful Cisco firewall, etc. – don’t want to bore you with all the details but trust us, they are awesome), we installed the servers at our data center, so the next step is to do a lot of testing, and finally to move all databases and systems from the old servers to the new ones.
There will be a planned 1 hour downtime during the actual system migration, tentatively scheduled between August 10th and August 15th. Five days before the migration, we will inform all local system admins about the exact date and time. This is just an advanced notice because you (sys admins) will also need to do something on your part to complete the upgrade – depending on the status of your custom domain mapping. This is very important, so please read carefully:
- If your LibGuides system is not setup with the custom domain mapping (i.e. your system is on the domain something.libguides.com) you do not need to do anything on your end.
- If you have the custom domain mapping (i.e. your system is on something.yourdomain.edu/net/org) AND your IT folks in charge of your domain have created a cname alias for your libguides domain you do not need to do anything on your end.
- If you have the custom domain mapping AND your IT folks in charge of your domain have created an A record for your libguides domain and pointed it to LibGuides servers IP, you will need to tell them to update the A domain record with the new IP (which we will give to you in an email informing you about the exact downtime date/time, 5 days before the upgrade). This change needs to happen either during our upgrade or after the upgrade – do not have them change the IP before the upgrade because then your system will not be reachable prior to the upgrade.
Hence, what you (libguides admins) should do now is contact the IT folks in charge of your domain and ask them if they created a cname alias or an A record for your custom LibGuides domain. Depending on their answer, read the previous paragraph again and act accordingly 🙂
We do not anticipate moving the IPs again so once this change is completed you (and we) should be fine for the next few years at least. In order to ensure the smooth upgrade, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions – support {at} springshare dot com and we’ll quickly answer any questions or concerns.
All libguides admins will get an email 5 days before the upgrade with the timing of the downtime and the IP address which the IT folks on your end need to update if they created an A record for your domain.