@Clement_Goubert Has anything major changed in your process since the last time (noticeable things that are worth being announced)?

As you gave 3 dates in the task description, can you confirm precisely when the wikis will be in a read-only mode noticeable by anyone? Thank you!

In T328287#8579474, @Trizek-WMF wrote:

As you gave 3 dates in the task description, can you confirm precisely when the wikis will be in a read-only mode noticeable by anyone? Thank you!

The wikis will be read-only briefly Wednesday, March 1st, 2023

In T328287#8579336, @Trizek-WMF wrote:

@Clement_Goubert Has anything major changed in your process since the last time (noticeable things that are worth being announced)?

There's at least one big thing, it's the first switchover since we went multi-DC. That has a number of implications, but the biggest is that since codfw is already getting read traffic, cache warmup should be a lot shorter (or inexistant, with a bit of luck).

I'm gathering other possible changes from the rest of SRE.

Thank you Clément.

@RZamora-WMF is my backup for this task. She will review all steps when I made them.

Task follow-up:

• Asana task created: https://app.asana.com/0/1176034857101033/1203875634625584/f (@RZamora-WMF, I let you checking it)
• Waiting for SRE information to update the message to communities.

Task follow-up:

• Tech news announcement: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tech/News/2023/07&action=history
• Information message to communities updated: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tech%2FServer_switch&diff=24500367&oldid=23384452

I will send the emails for translations when these two items will have been checked.

Apart from multi-DC, the other possibly notable thing is that a Gitlab switchover will also be performed. I'll let @LSobanski and/or @thcipriani decide if it's worth communicating since it'll affect the technical community.

It is worth communicating anything that disturbs one's habits. :) Better safe than sorry!

@Clement_Goubert @LSobanski @thcipriani

I'd like to ping translators before the end of this week. Before this, it is better to add any relevant information to the message.

Can you confirm if there is any possible disturbance regarding the Gitlab switchover? Are other services, such as mailing lists, Etherpad, or Phabricator concerned by this switchover?

It is not a matter of deciding if we will not announce a disturbance if there are 99% chances of things going okay. I'm looking for that 1% chance of a minimal disturbance that could be noticed, reported, and become a drama. As I wrote often, "better safe than sorry!" :)

I'll let @LSobanski answer authoritatively for Phabricator and Etherpad.
We are not switching over the mailing lists, nor are we switching over WDQS.
For more information, excluded services (service catalog names) are tracked at T329193: March 2023 Datacenter Switchover Excluded services

• GitLab failover requires a ~1.5h maintenance window during which GitLab will be unavailable.
• We won't be switching Phabricator or Etherpad over.

While not directly linked to the switchover as it does not have a codfw deployment, Toolhub will probably be impacted by the eqiad cluster's kubernetes 1.23 upgrade that will happen during the switched over period.

• I added the mention of GitLab being unavailable. I now consider the message to communities as final.
  • I sent the requests for translations.
• I posted a reminder on Tech News. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News/2023/08

Central Notice

• Banner updated
  • Diff
  • Preview
• Banner set
  • starts 2023-03-01 @ 13:30 UTC, disappears 2023-03-01 @ 14:01 UTC
  • targets all languages (except aa, for technical reasons) and all projects
  • will display https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:CentralNoticeBanners/edit/read_only_banner
  • Priority: emergency (will take over all other banners)
  • Note: the setting might be changed by other banner admins. I'll keep an eye on these changes.

Other tasks

• I updated the Tech/Server_switch message to remove a sentence that had to be translated each time. It will save translators time.
• I added the news on Meta front page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template%3AMain_Page%2FWM_News&diff=24561276&oldid=24545900

I checked all translations regarding time and date. I had to fix all of them manually, at least the ones that were already completely translated but with this time and date change to be made. Translators involvement was not as important as it used to be for these operations (even if more important than usual).

The most important thing is that the time and date are now correctly displayed for all those languages, even if the grammar might not be correct.

I pinged users who formerly translated the message. Also, further updates will happen when the message is distributed to village pumps (on Monday). Hopefully, it will be okay for the 30-minute display on the banner on Wednesday.

As the switchover happens on Wednesday, I think it is better to distribute the message to village pumps on Monday. This way, we can reply to questions quite immediately, compared to posting this message now, and letting communities ask questions and then guess because we don't reply. :)

After multiple reviews, fixes, and the last translations being done, the message has been sent to 832 community pages + 419 pages used for bots coordination.

I'll check on the banners' translations tomorrow (they have to be manually approved).

It happend.

The next step, next week: debrief the process.