VC Upgrade 1.12.2 (Details) | Veterancraft Dedicated Server | Forum

Lack of Information

In regards to the lack of information regarding updates, there are no excuses. I have regularly hemmed and hawed to post much needed information. Deep down, I was afraid that while everything looked ready to go or at least test, that something else would come along or be discovered that would affect the time line. At the time of each past comment and post, I truly believed what was stated. But, so far, my track record in following through has been atrocious. Believe me, not posting information bothers me more than most.

As many of you know, I tend to be blunt and straightforward about things; sometimes too much, causing ruffled feathers from time to time. One would think that this nature of mine alone should have had me posting information, yet internally I find myself holding back to say what needs to be said. It might not be fear, but it certainly is a good case of being gun shy. Even now, as I am writing this, it takes all my willpower to quell the resistance to speak of details.

Part of this comes from having a high level of empathy. I spend a lot of time in my career walking in other people's shoes to understanding their points of views and what issues cause them stress; regardless of whether I consider them germane. It helps me and those I work for to find solutions that are acceptable to most. Unfortunately, my empathy and bluntness are in a constant state of struggle.

On the one hand, I want to post information – good or bad – to keep members informed. On the other hand I resist, because I do not want to cause undo concerns to others; following a close second is my fear that if I do state something positive that, as mentioned before, sometime will come along to screw with it; as has happened several times. What is ironic, is that I have coached dozens of individuals to help overcome that exact problem, yet I find myself unable to listen to my own advice; truly a case of the cobbler's children not having shoes.

For that, I can only ask for your forgiveness. If not that, at least members can be rest assured that this eats at me regularly and is not due to me having abandoned VeteranCraft. Apart from a few weeks here and there, I have been working on VeteranCraft directly and indirectly. I have well over 100 pages of logs in my VeteranCraft workbook alone covering dozens of topics, tests, features, an so on. I will hit upon those later. But first, I need to get everyone on the same page and explain what VeteranCraft is now and what I want it will become.

Although there is lot more to be said, I have to put this thread, diatribe, manifesto – call it whatever you will – on hold for the next 24 hrs. I was pulled away last night by urgent texts from Mudwog. As mentioned previously, both of us have reviewed tasks at hand to identify those that must be completed and those that could wait after the release.

One essential task, which I had hoped to explain at a later point, is to replace our existing servers with newer hardware. While there is nothing physically wrong with our servers, they are based on 2015 technology, which in terms of production servers running 24x7 is fairly old. We had decided to move forward with migration before the conclusion of our next billing cycle next Friday; at least that was the plan.

While our data center gets top marks from us for equipment and network quality, promptness and accuracy in resolving technical and service issues, the same cannot be said for their billing system, despite best efforts by their billing department. Past experience has shown us that it is better to make equipment changes toward the end of a billing cycle and let older services expire, than having to suffer a flurry of emails and phones mid-cycle to get credits transferred. This is not due to an unwillingness by our data center, but due to functional limitations of their billing system; often requiring a deity to descend from the heavens to make such corner cases right.

Case in point, while our billing cycle should have ended next Friday, it is ending today! Somewhere within the past 3-4 months, an update to their billing system lost our accrued time credits. I can get them back, but the time and effort to do so now would be a waste. It is better to save that for a later date.

In short, both of us once more poured over various server options and offerings into the wee hours of today to determine the best configurations for VeteranCraft's new infrastructure. We already know what we wanted, but service offerings are in a constant flux and due diligence must be applied. Case in point, we can create a configuration for an “Enterprise” and an “Infrastructure” system with identically hardware, guarantees, service-level agreements, and features, yet one is $12 cheaper. Go figure!

Thus, the crux of this situation is that I just placed an order for two new servers – actually we could use three, but that can be put off for now – and that Mudwog and I have less than 10 hours to migrate and convert everything from our old servers to the new ones. The good news is, that halfway through writing this post, I received notification that the new servers have been deployed and are ready for configuration.

Please understand that this is a migration of existing Minecraft servers and support services into our new infrastructure. This is not an update of our Minecraft servers themselves.