Workwise, on Tuesday we finally did the big switchover to the new platform for the main system I’m responsible for. It’s been running on a single VM for over five years, and that’s now been replaced by an OTP cluster of four nodes, a redundant pair of load balancers and a primary/standby database pair. The Mk2 servers have been running in parallel for over a year, while all the connectivity was sorted out to the 1500-odd nodes it monitors (fortunately by the customer rather than me – corporate firewall bureaucracy isn’t pleasant). The actual switchover took about an hour, which was mostly dumping and importing the database, and apart from a few minor glitches everything seems to still work afterwards.
Then on Thursday I got contacted because another system (which mostly ticks over without anyone having to touch anything) had suddenly stopped being able to download data from one of its sources because of an unknown CA error. My first thought was to blame ZScaler, but I think it was just a case of the external site switching to a cert that the ancient http library versions didn’t know about. I eventually managed to upgrade just enough things to fix it, and conjure up a working build, but it’s a reminder that we really need to take some time to upgrade all the things at some point. In a company where every system seems to have a huge team attached to it, I’m not sure how I’ve ended up as the sole developer/architect/support person for three entire applications, but at least we recently managed to get the other two shut down!
Another ex-colleague Fat Cat meet-up on Wednesday, featuring my current and previous two bosses. No Dave this time, or we could have made it four.
Running-wise, the first proper club session of the year on Tuesday, after last week’s was cancelled because of icy roads (though it seems most of us went out anyway and did our own thing). No ice this week, but plenty of rain, and a long drive home in damp clothes as the A14 was closed. Then a drizzly Thursday Tempo Ten, and a cobbled-together long run before and after parkrun on Saturday. The lads were doing their long run on Sunday, and I ran out to meet them on the way back, as an excuse to pop into the clubhouse for a second breakfast and, as it turned out, three pints of Exmoor Beast.