To W2K3 : Sites starting to move
My network admin and I made the final switch-over of two production sites and backend SQL databases to our new W2K3 server yesterday. There were scheduled jobs and other sites on the network which talked to either the IIS sites or to the SQL databases or to both, so it wasn't a completely simple affair. I tested and documented and was ready for any contingency. Within 30 minutes we were rockin' on the new server and all users were being routed to the new server by a change on the SonicWall firewall. I repeated all of my tests and everything was looking pretty. My network admin was happy and went to Blimpies to enjoy the Thursday $4.95 special. I stayed to keep testing just to be sure, cause I'm like that.
After about an hour I got a call from my net admin saying that users were getting .NET runtime errors which listed a database login error. That couldn't be! There was no reason for it! There were also incidents of 404s on pages I had successfully tested both prior and after the migration.
Fortunately this state of panic lasted only a few minutes, because Mr. ISA, the butt blaster he is, stopped by to say, "Remember me??????" My [sent-directly-from-heaven] network admin quickly deduced that ISA Server was hanging on to the old IPs which he had updated on the SonicWall. Why both he and I didn't encounter any errors in our testing and others did continues to baffle me. It was agonizing though, since its the job of every developer to peform his or her work invisible to the user. This time is was almost, but no cigar. So when we move the next site, we add a reboot of ISA Server to the procedure.