November Network Backbone Improvements
Earlier this summer, our data center made additional investments in the data center backbone network through hardware and network capacity upgrades. We’re now prepared to provide the benefit of the improved performance, stability, peering, and network reach to the servers located in the legacy Planet Houston and Dallas datacenters. A similar activity is planned for the servers located in London, and a similar notification will be sent in the future for that data center.
Throughout November, our data center network engineering team will be making network routing changes to migrate Internet traffic for legacy Planet US servers from the previous ISP uplinks onto the data center backbone. In order to minimize risk of any impact to customers, this change will consist of a series of piecemeal steps, gracefully shifting inbound and outbound traffic to each of our peers and ISPs across the various data centers.
We do not anticipate any downtime related to this work. Customers may notice a change in Internet traffic paths to and from your servers as we progress through this migration.
Here is the planned timeline of events:
Wednesday, November 16 2011 12:00AM - 4:00AM CST
(06h00 – 10h00 UTC 16-NOV-2011)
Preparation work to configure NetFlow export on the DSRs in Dallas and Houston: During this window there will be no changes made to traffic paths, however configuration will be applied to the aggregation routers to prepare for the final topology. Since these routers handle the aggregate of all customer traffic, this work is scheduled for off-peak times as a precaution.
Monday November 21, 2011 10:00AM – 2:00PM CST
(16h00 – 20h00 UTC 21-NOV-2011)
Ingress changes, phase 1: During this window we will begin to shift ingress traffic from the Internet over to the data center backbone. Traffic paths into legacy Planet servers will take SoftLayer peers and backbone ISPs.
Tuesday November 22, 2011 10:00AM – 2:00PM CST
(16h00 – 20h00 UTC 22-NOV-2011)
Ingress changes, phase 2: During this window we will complete the shift of ingress traffic from the Internet over to the SoftLayer backbone. We will cease all ingress traffic via the legacy Planet peers and ISPs.
Egress changes, phase 1: During this window we will begin to shift egress traffic to the Internet over to the SoftLayer backbone. Traffic paths from legacy Planet servers will egress a mix of SoftLayer peers and legacy Planet ISP links, based on best available route.
Monday November 28, 2011 10:00AM – 2:00PM CST
(16h00 – 20h00 UTC 28-NOV-2011)
Egress changes, phase 2: During this window we will continue to shift egress traffic to the Internet over to the SoftLayer backbone. Some traffic paths from legacy Planet servers will be shifted over to the SoftLayer ISPs.
Tuesday November 29, 2011 10:00AM – 2:00PM CST
(16h00 – 20h00 UTC 29-NOV-2011)
Egress changes, phase 3: During this window we will complete to shift all egress traffic to the Internet over the SoftLayer backbone. We will cease all egress traffic via legacy Planet ISPs in Dallas and Houston.
We have also scheduled the following times as contingencies to handle any additional issues we may encounter during the scheduled changes:
- Sunday, November 20, 2011 12:00AM - 4:00AM CST
(06h00 – 10h00 UTC 20-NOV-2011)
Off-peak for any high risk or potentially intrusive changes - Sunday, November 27, 2011 12:00AM - 4:00AM CST
(06h00 – 10h00 UTC 27-NOV-2011)
Off-peak for any high risk or potentially intrusive changes - Wednesday November 30, 2011 10:00AM – 2:00PM CST
(16h00 – 20h00 UTC 30-NOV-2011)
Daytime window for graceful traffic shifts or other configuration adjustments - Thursday, December 1, 2011 12:00AM - 4:00AM CST
(06h00 – 10h00 UTC 01-DEC-2011)
Off-peak for any high risk or potentially intrusive changes
We will carefully monitor network performance and capacity through this process.
Thank you,
2011/11/09
