Cape Town Data Centre move FAQ

The relocation will begin on Wednesday, 8 January until 14 February 2025. 

Self-Managed Server moves will take place on Wednesday nights.

Managed Server and Web Hosting moves will take place on Friday and Saturday nights.

You will receive an email in early November notifying you of the date your server(s) and/or website(s) will be moved.

Our lease at Great Westerford is coming to an end on 28 February 2025.

We have secured space with Open Access Data Centres (OADC) in Brackenfell (Cape Town) and you will continue to be hosted by us.

The maintenance window will be from 22:00 – 06:00 SAST. Servers will be downed from 22:00 and the expected downtime for your service will be up to 120 minutes. The additional time until 06:00 provides recovery time for servers that require manual intervention to be brought back online before regular business hours start.

If you are a Web Hosting customer, you may experience two downtime periods if your website uses a database. This is because databases are stored on a specialised server, separate from the web server that hosts the website and email. Your database server and web server may be migrated at different times. 

Downtime can’t be avoided due to the nature of the move that necessitates the relocation of all servers to the new facility.

We will reach out to you via email in early November with the exact date your service(s) will be impacted.

Managed Servers and Web Hosting:

While we do daily backups on your behalf, we strongly recommend that you have your own, separate backup of your site content and databases. 

Self-Managed Servers:

The relocation will require you to power down your server(s) to move it to the new location. If you have not performed this action, we will be forced to initiate the power down at your own risk and will not be held liable for any data loss. 

We will provide a date and time the server needs to be shut down closer to the time. We highly recommend you perform the following before the move, to ensure the seamless migration of your server(s):

• Perform a server health check, specifically disk integrity and health and let us know if any replacements are required at least 2 weeks before your scheduled move.
• You should have a disaster recovery process in place. Ensure backups are up to date and that they can be restored.
• If you are running Windows on your server, please ensure that all Windows updates have been completed before the scheduled move date and that you have rebooted your server after applying the updates.
• It is recommended to reboot servers that have not been restarted for some time before the move date to ensure they boot without issues.
• Suspend/pause/reschedule scripts/processes which may run and fail during the maintenance window i.e. backups, cron jobs.

We have prepared an email template that you are free to use.

Server moves occur on specific dates and times and we cannot guarantee exact move times. If your server cannot be moved on the scheduled day, you may request a different move date. Our team will assess feasibility and provide available options. 

Please note that we cannot accommodate specific time slots. 

Schedule changes must be requested at least two weeks in advance.

To ensure the safety and integrity of your server and data, we kindly request that you initiate the server shutdown process from your end. A proper shutdown minimises the risk of data loss and system corruption. If you are unable to perform this action, our technical team will need to initiate a hard shutdown, which may potentially lead to damage to your server and operating system.

Backlinked servers will be batched as part of a single move to ensure hosts that need to be together are moved together.

No, there will be no need for IP renumbering or VLAN changes. Your networks will be configured before the move.

Data Centre technicians will be on-site to provide remote hands support. Data Centre technicians will not be able to provide support on specific issues on Self-Managed Servers.

We will power down your server by pressing the power button. To minimise the risk of database corruption, please power down your server before the scheduled move.

• You can provision new servers in the Cape Town Data Centre (Great Westerford) until 30 November 2024.
• We recommend provisioning new servers in Samrand instead of the Cape Town Data Centre (Great Westerford). Please only use Cape Town if absolutely necessary.
• All new installations and hardware upgrades will be paused at both the Great Westerford and OADC sites from 1 December 2024 to 31 January 2025.
• Hardware failures at either location will be handled as normal.
• Normal operations will resume at the new OADC site from 1 February 2025.

We will share the servers that have relocated on our Network Status page as the relocations are completed.

No, if your DNS is configured to point to another provider, your services will not be impacted during the move.

Yes, this is a permanent move.