Monday, February 15, 2010

BlogPatrol Reconstruction Complete!

February 15, 2010: I'm very pleased to announce that our project is complete and 100% successful!  Not only are all the features of your BlogPatrol account functioning fully for you now, but we have released major upgrades to the service, including:

  • A new architecture that allows us to do system maintenance with minimum downtime.
  • The new architecture includes new hardware that provides a faster website for you.
  • The ability for us to partition your historical data so that we no longer have to purge (delete) it from your account.  Using the Previous and Next links on your stats reports, you can scroll through your data and go back as early as December 27, 2009.  We anticipate being able to store at least twelve months of data using our current system design and hardware.
  • The Detailed Analysis of the Last 50 Visitors report has been upgraded dramatically to the Detailed Visitor Logs.  The upgraded reports allow you to view the details of any visitor that we have recorded in our database.  You can scroll through all your detailed logs using the Previous Day and Next Day links.  The detailed logs are displayed using pages that list up to 50 visitors per page.  Pagination links allow you to scroll through the details of the day.
February 7, 2010: The BlogPatrol reconstruction project is nearly complete... We have successfully achieved our goals of reconstructing the server architecture for faster performance and, more importantly, partitioning historical stats.  This means that you now have a longer history of stats available to you and that you will be able to view your stats more quickly .  We are monitoring our system to see if any final tweaks are needed to further optimize performance.

January 30, 2010: Most major tasks have been completed in the reconfiguration of the server for speed and reliability.  We are starting to work on the part of the project that, hopefully, will allow us to provide historical stats.  (We currently have to purge stats forever after about 4 weeks. Otherwise, the database would grow too large and cause the system to operate too slowly.)  The partitioning project is very complex, and we cannot guarantee that it will be achieved.  We will, however, give it our best shot!

January 25, 2010: As of January 24, we have resumed the reconstruction project.  Please expect down times, both intermittent in frequency and extended in duration, until we are able to post an update on the next milestones completed.

January 19, 2010:  We are expecting the project to resume after January 21, when the schedule for our project team becomes available again.

January 18, 2010:  BlogPatrol is currently, intermittently back online.  Please expect slow site performance from time to time until the reconstruction project resumes.

January 17, 2010:  The site is currently down.

 January 8-21, 2010:  Due to scheduling constraints, there will be a break in the reconstruction project until after January 21.  At this time BlogPatrol is online, running a fast SSD drive, and benefiting from a database redesign that offers a single master for recording stats and a single slave for generating stats reports.  Until the reconstruction project is finalized, however, the site may still function slowly at times.

January 7, 2010:  The stats reports were unavailable this morning.  As of 2:30 PM Eastern, the system and stats are now back online.

January 5, 2010:  Completed upgrade to MySQL 5.1.  Completed some configurations needed for multi-master/slaves design.  Undergoing testing to make sure system changes are functioning properly.

January 4, 2010:  The reconstruction project is still in progress throughout this week.  The website and stats reports may at times perform more slowly than normal -- or be unavailable for extended periods -- while the project is being completed.  We will continue to post updates as project tasks are completed.

January 3, 2010:  Had problems with stats reports between Jan 1-3. To resolve the problems, backed up December 2009 data, purged the database, and resynced master/slave databases.

January 1, 2010:  Happy New Year 2010!  We have completed the reconstruction's first tasks: initial conversion to a virtual server environment and deployment of the first of multiple slave databases.  Slave databases are intended for the purpose of displaying your stats more quickly.  The second phase will occur next week, which will include the deployment of additional slave databases and an upgrade from MySQL 5.0 to 5.1.

December 31, 2009:  BlogPatrol currently is offline while we are reconstructing the server for better performance in 2010.

December 30, 2009:  We've started the reconstruction process for BlogPatrol.  We will be performing major upgrades on BlogPatrol.com that will allow for greatly improved speed and functionality in 2010.  We apologize for the down-time that will occur as a result of this work, but it's short-term pain for what will be long-term, worthwhile improvements.

Improvements:
  • We will be upgrading our hard disks to include several solid-state drives, which operate faster than SATA, SAS, or SCSI drives.
  • We will be going from a single instance database to a multi-master/slave database design.  Having a multi-master design means that it will be easier to keep BlogPatrol online and tracking your stats -- even when maintenance is being done on the system.  In a single instance database, maintenance usually required going offline completely.
  • Having multiple slave instances of databases means that BlogPatrol means that you will be able to access your stats reports more quickly.
  • We will be upgrading to MySQL 5.1 which will provide the basis for segmenting data into historical partitions.  If we were able to utilize this capability, then BlogPatrol would be able to retain your stats as archives that you can access, instead of having to purge (delete) them from the system.

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11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't log into Blog Patrol..today...drives me crazy that I can't see my stats :(.

Tony said...

Anonymous: I'm so sorry for BlogPatrol being offline. We are working on the server and will bring the site back online as soon as possible.

Anonymous said...

Seems that you still can't log into Blog Patrol as of 11am UK time 2/1/10

Steve Massanelli said...

Blogpatrol not registering site visits today. What's up?

Tony said...

Steve Massanelli: Last night, we fixed issues affecting the display of the stats reports, which made it appear as if the stats were not being recorded. Are you still having problems seeing the stats as of January 4?

Tony said...

Anonymous 2: Throughout most of this week, BlogPatrol will be operating more slowly -- and be unavailable for periods of time -- while we complete the tasks related to this project of reconstructing the server.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tony,

When I login into my account and select View Stats, all I see is a blank page.

Richard G said...

Well done! I can tell a lot of work has gone into the upgrade and that much of it is probably a 'labor of love'. It's looking good...

Tony said...

Richard G: Thanks a ton! We put everything we have into this upgrade. We hope everyone enjoys the improvements. Please let us know if anything seems awry. Since we work BlogPatrol part-time, we depend a lot on feedback from users to help us.

Anonymous said...

The site is horrendously slow!

azharie said...

Blogpatrol counter hit still cant use? from transforawesome.blogspot.com