Hokie ClubAs you may have noticed late Sunday/most of Monday, hokiesports.com went AWOL. The official athletics Web site for Virginia Tech then reappeared on Monday afternoon/evening. Those looking for their Hokie fix may have expected the site to return revamped with a new design. While that will eventually happen in the coming weeks, that was not the case on Monday.
The hokiesports.com staff regularly performs software updates to keep up with security patches and bug fixes on all of the programs installed on the server. This particular software update went awry on Sunday, causing the server to lose all networking capabilities. All of the site’s data (over 150 gigabytes) then needed to be copied off of the faulty server and onto a new server, which then needed to be configured. As you can imagine, the transfer of such a large data volume took some time.
All of that was completed by noon on Monday, but hokiesports.com’s journey back from the abyss had one more obstacle. Tech’s Web staff had been planning on seamlessly changing servers from their previous location in Virginia Tech’s Corporate Research Center to a new home in Lane Stadium. However, due to Sunday night’s mishap, the staff was forced to make the move prematurely. Because of the change in locations, new IP addresses had to be registered with the Blacksburg Electronic Village, which handles the Web site’s DNS (domain name server) entries. The BEV made the switch shortly after 1 p.m Monday, but the process can take some time to disseminate across all of the DNS servers around the world. So depending on your internet service provider, hokiesports.com’s availability may have differed from elsewhere in the Hokie Nation.
Thank you for your patience and understanding, and keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming redesign.