[HCARC] Radio Email

[Fred]

New CMS Cluster Goes Live October 31

The Winlink Development Team has scheduled the switch between the 
current production CMS cluster (Wien, Perth, Halifax, San Diego) to the 
new 'cloud' CMS cluster hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The change 
will take place on October 31, 2017 at 1600 UT.

The new upgraded server cluster is geographically diverse and sits 
within the AWS management environment. This, along with the newest, 
improved CMS software, provides the Winlink team better management 
tools, better analytics and monitoring, better backup, automated 
recovery from common problems, and will mean for users even more 
dependability and faster performance. Just in case, we have an 
independent live backup CMS system in San Diego that can be put online 
in minutes should the whole Amazon infrastructure collapse--and that's 
not likely. And even if that fails, the Hybrid RMS gateway radio-only 
network will function to keep message routing and delivery moving.

The AWS CMS server cluster has been in continuous beta testing for 
almost two years. We successfully tested it under full load of the 
network for four hours on June 16th. We are confident that users will 
notice no troubles with this change. But we're always on guard: There is 
nothing users need to do before or after the change, but we would like 
any issues you come upon to be promptly reported to the 
Winlink_Programs_Group support group. Just click the 'Support' item in 
the web site menu for access to it.

Current versions of Winlink Express have a checkbox that allows users to 
test the beta AWS cluster. After the 'go-live' date, this setting simply 
becomes inoperative, and a later version of the software will see the 
control disappear. Users of Airmail and other third party clients should 
also see no effect as long as they do not use IP addresses in settings 
to refer to CMS sites. Make sure your settings use 'server.winlink.org' 
wherever your program asks for the address of a Winlink CMS. All other 
settings remain the same.

The outgoing CMS servers are managed by volunteer sysops Neil Hughes, 
VE1YZ and Don Trotter, VE1DTR (Halifax); Phil Sutherland, VK6KPS 
(Perth), Gerhard Kmet, OE1ZK and Michael Kastelic, OE1MCU (Wien) and Tom 
Lafleur, KA6IQA and Scott Miller, K6SKM (San Diego). Each CMS was hosted 
at facilities donated to the Amateur Radio Safety Foundation. These 
individuals and host facilities have served Winlink for many years with 
stellar performance, permitting Winlink's 99.99% uptime record since 
2000. Our gratitude for their dedication and services can't be expressed 
well enough in words. We invite our users to send them their individual 
thanks, and perhaps a short story about how you found their work behind 
the scenes useful, even life-saving, in the past. They can be reached at 
THEIRCALL at winlink.org.

The good news is that these valuable members of the Winlink team will 
continue to operate RMS gateways, and contribute their knowledge and 
skills to the system as WDT members.

--Winlink Development Team