Ok, I'm in the process of finalizing an order for a substantially beefed up server. The load on the server had been slowly increasing since last summer, but there was still quite a bit of headroom. However, vBulletin 4.x puts a much greater load on the server, and as a result we are getting periodic slow downs. I knew this was a possibility before upgrading, but as I've stated elsewhere, it was time to upgrade vBulletin for a large number of reasons.
The new server will have a substantially faster processor and substantially faster hard drives. I'm going to keep the same amount of RAM initially, although it is faster RAM, but if needed it will support more RAM and they can upgrade that in the middle of the night with only a few minutes of downtime.
If I get all the details finalized tomorrow, then I will try and do the migration Friday night/Saturday morning or possibly Saturday night/Sunday morning. If I miss that Window, then the next one will probably be next Saturday night/Sunday morning.
While I will do as much of the migration as possible in the overnight hours, there will be possibly an hour or so of actual downtime. Beyond that, the server IP will change so it will require a DNS change. How quickly this occurs will be based on whether or not your ISP follows the TTL setting of the BroncosForums DNS server, or ignores it as some ISPs do and simply updates their DNS every 4, 12 or 24 hours.
Once the old forum is shutdown and the new one is live, I will have a message on the old one with a direct IP address link that can be used in the short term until the DNS is fully propagated.
Anyway, it will be a relatively short disruption, but should put us in much better position to handle any surge around the draft or once things pick back up when the season starts and the Broncos make their SB run.
If you have any questions you can post them here.
T