System upgrades scheduled this coming week

RescueGroups.org has a couple system upgrades scheduled for this coming week, including over Thanksgiving.

First, on Saturday 11/23 from 8-10 AM, the RescueGroups.org FTP server will be unavailable.  This will affect any data uploads (to RescueGroups.org) or bulk export functions.  Exports to the adoption listing websites and the API will not be affected.

Then, early Thanksgiving morning, we will be performing a system upgrade on our production web servers.  We do not expect to have any noticeable or significant interruption of service because of this upgrade.

These upgrades do not include any changes to the functionality of our services.  They are primarily back-end system changes.  However, due to system architecture changes, software version upgrades, and the consolidation of our code base, there may be minor issues immediately following the upgrade.  We're not expecting any issues, but we realize that with a system as large as RescueGroups.org, a minor one here or there is generally inevitable.

You might be a little leery of system upgrades and their potential impact to your life-saving operations.  So, here's some things we're doing to make sure this upgrade goes smoothly:

  • We're doing as much testing as possible beforehand.
  • We'll do the upgrade on a holiday, so hopefully any minor issues will be resolved while you're relaxing and away from your computer.
  • We will be available all day Thursday, Friday, and the weekend if there are any issues that need attention.
  • We will respond to you promptly and directly if you need to contact Support regarding an issue you notice after the upgrades.
  • If there are any significant issues that cannot be resolved quickly we will be able to switch back to the previous systems.

Although these two system upgrades do not provide any new functionality, they are a big step in the right direction so that we can provide improved service performance and roll out enhancements with a lot less overhead.

Thank you for your support!

Posted in API, Developers, Uncategorized, Updates