[Labs-l] IMPORTANT: mothballed instances, marked for death!

Fri Sep 12 23:32:35 UTC 2014

First, let me clarify that this email does NOT apply to any tools within 
the 'Tools' project.  It's exclusive to self-managed projects outside of 
toollabs.

Specific answers, below:

On 9/12/14 6:06 PM, Maciej Jaros wrote:
> Andrew Bogott (2014-09-13 00:34):
>> During the datacenter migration back in March, I 'mothballed' quite a 
>> few projects and instances.  Such projects had their data and VMs 
>> moved to eqiad, but were left in a disabled and/or compressed state.  
>> A very large number of those projects and/or instances have been 
>> untouched since, presumably because they're no longer of interest to 
>> anyone.
>
> How do you define "touched"? Modified? Maybe the project is simply 
> working fine and doesn't need modifications.
Instance pages keep a record of when an instance has been created and/or 
rebooted.  If an instance was created in March, is in the 'SHUTOFF' 
state, and has no reboots in its log, I can conclude that it has not 
been accessed since the migration from pmtpa in March.

>
> Also. How would a project author know its project is "mothballed"? 
> Were the authors notified by e-mail? Are the users of such projects 
> aware of this "status"?

During the migration in March I contacted all project admins, both 
directly and via this list.  Projects were mothballed when I was unable 
to contact any project admin.  The complete list of projects (active, 
mothballed, and deleted) can be found here: 
https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Labs_Eqiad_Migration/Progress

Mothballed instances and projects are turned off, so it's unlikely that 
they have users at this late date.

Hope this makes sense!  This email is a followup to a torrent of related 
communications that took place six months ago during the datacenter 
migration.  I confess that if you missed all that then this may seem 
abrupt.  But, as I mentioned -- all that's necessary to forestall the 
execution is an email requesting that your project be preserved.

-Andrew