Hello Pastelink users!

Firstly, we'd like to apologise for the length of time between updates to Pastelink. June was quite some time ago now and since then we've been busy dealing with hosting issues, content problems, server and software upgrading, all while doing everything we can to keep Pastelink running 24/7 without any interruption.

Server Updates

A long time issue we've faced with Pastelink is the problem of how to keep Pastelink online when issues outside of our control occur. For example, when datacentres lose connectivity, or when the hosting company have problems that we are forced to wait out. Many sites will solve this simply with a CDN, but this is not feasible with the amount of data we keep and process.
Today we've launched our solution to this issue, automatic database syncing between multiple servers and a failover DNS, that will detect a server outage and automatically switch users to a new server when required. We expect with this system that downtime will be kept to a maximum now of just 2 minutes each time something goes wrong, for an estimated total of no more than 10 minutes per year.

DNS update

To get the new reliable server setup working, we needed to switch to a new DNS provider. This mostly went without issue, however a small percentage (less than 10%) of people had trouble connecting to Pastelink last weekend. We found the cause of that issue and fixed it on Sunday.

Future Preparation

While preparing this update, we also made preparations and server resource allocation for new features, some of which will be ready very soon. The biggest of these are search, API, markdown and stats.

The next update should be ready in just about a month's time.