We hope everyone out there had a great Holiday Season and Happy New Year! In addition to enjoying "the season" ourselves we've been quite busy so we're back to give you a quick update on all the threads of activities that have been keeping us going! Those include 2.10 Release Candidate coming up, new site and repository servers and the fast approaching Open Telephony Training Class.
FreePBX 2.10 Beta/RC
On the FreePBX 2.10 front we finally got the Version Upgrade module out and into the 2.9 online repository so that we could facilitate more of you participating in the beta program. There was a slight delay in doing such as we wanted to make sure that the new Backup and Restore module in 2.10 could restore a 2.9 system “at least as good as has always been the case.” What that means is that we don’t support restoring backups between major releases although it has always “mostly/somewhat worked.” We did not want to put a Version Upgrade module into the 2.9 repository without having at least that level of functionality that many of you have grown to expect from us.
We released the upgrade module in conjunction with pushing 2.10 into a beta3 stage. Calling it beta3 vs. Release Candidate 1 (RC1) was more of a formality. We wanted to do a sanity check with the first wave of migrations before putting our RC stamp of confidence on it even though we are all feeling quite comfortable with this new release and have it up in dozens of production settings already. Since all has been quiet since that time and plenty of upgrades have been occurring, we plan on moving 2.10 to a release candidate at the end of this week at this point!
New Site Servers
We are excited to inform you that most of the first phase of our FreePBX.org and Online Repository migration has been accomplished without a hitch! Our single site server is now made up of two pairs of servers that comprise the site and repository and their respective live replicated backups! Currently the replicated servers are at the same data center but have plans to move to a separate facility soon. We also have full backups occurring on the replicated servers so those of you in parts of the world who used to feel a bit of a slowdown when we were “selfishly” doing our backups in the middle of the US night should no longer have that issue! The replication is done using a combination of MySQL realtime replication and hourly rsync’s as well as instantaneous rsyncs when we publish on the repository. We couldn’t have done all of this and so smoothly without the generous assistance provided by Schmooze Com, Inc so as always, a big THANKS to them!
We noticed that up until we shutdown the old server, about 2 weeks after changing the DNS records, it was still getting a fair amount of traffic. For the FreePBX.org site it was mostly spider bots so no concern there. For the repository site it appeared there were still lots of FreePBX systems trying to hit the old server. This would occur if you were to have manually entered the old IP address on your server in /etc/hosts or otherwise have a really mis-behaved DNS cache. If you are not getting updates, you may want to check /etc/hosts. Over the years there have been many cases where people ran into various DNS problems and fixed them by hard coding the FreePBX mirror site address. If you were in this category you will have to undo that change to get the updates flowing again.
Open Telephony Training Seminar - Naples, FL - Jan 24-26
We are really excited with the upcoming OTTS class just under three weeks away! Given the weather recently here in the Pacific Northwest, I’m personally really stoked!. We’ve got an almost completely full class so if you are still on the fence, don’t get caught like some of the procrastinators the last time we gave this class without a spot. I think there is one more spot right now though we are reviewing logistics to see if we can’t accommodate a few more. But no guarantee! We also negotiated a good rate at the local Courtyard Marriott which was suppose to expire today though we just got them to keep a few rooms until the end of the week for any late stragglers.
For now, go upgrade to 2.10 and help us get that much more exposure and for those of you on your way to Florida, see you very soon!
Philippe On behalf of the FreePBX and Schmooze Teams!
