Merlot Digital - Status

Internet Radio (Broadcasts)

  1. Overview
  2. Internet Radio & Colo
  3. Internet Radio (Broadcasts)
  4. Issue

Radio: Major Server OS Upgrades (RHEL 8 to 9)

Updated

Explaining some key points about the works completed:

  • AlmaLinux 8 has Security Support into 2029, but General Support ended in 2024.
  • MediaCP decided to end their support for AlmaLinux 8 in 2025 rather than 2029.
  • We’d normally upgrade in-place (using ELevate), but MCP advised to start afresh.
  • This meant deploy parallel servers, backup/restore to them, then switch the IPs.
  • Old servers running AlmaLinux 8 will be retained for at least a 2-4 week period.
  • Server Hostnames and IP Addresses did not change throughout these works.
  • Backups were initiated at 9pm Sydney time. Restores done by 10pm Sydney.
  • Statistical anomalies and missing data inside the 1-hour period is expected.
  • The OS upgrades have enabled us to upgrade MediaCP (v2.14.7 to 2.14.8).
  • AlmaLinux 9 has active support to May 2027; security through May 2032.
  • Based on that, we expect the move to AlmaLinux 10 to be around 2028.
Ended
Monitoring

All stations are now back online, and testing produces consistent audio. Please let us know of any issues!

There were some irregularities with station statuses, so we did a further restart beyond the latest update.

Updated

Prep done & cutovers started by 9.40pm and we’re seeing stations with listener counts rising by 9.50pm.

Machines are now being upgraded from v2.14.7 to v2.14.8. Many thanks for your patience!

Updated

We’re about to start working through the actual migrations and cut-overs.

If anything goes awry that can’t be resolved, we will switch back to the old servers.

Impact should be relatively minimal, with most of the time in backing up & restoring.

Updated

Final testing dry-runs of the migration procedure have been successfully completed.

The migration includes all media, historical statistics and system- and account-level configurations.

We’ve found some tiny details that could be improved with the processes, and are logging it all to MediaCP.

Began
Maintenance Planned

G’day,

Due to dropped support by Media Control Panel, we’ll be upgrading AlmaLinux from version 8 to 9.

Normally this would be done as an in-place upgrade however that route is likely to cause data loss so we’re instead building a new server for each radio server, export and restore over to those, then switch IPs out.

We’re working with their Australian team to ensure this process goes smoothly.

This will mean our MediaCP servers continue to receive updates.

Cheers,
Merlot Digital

The Network Crew Pty Ltd (TNC)

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