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The Wikimedia Foundation <https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/> tests the
switch between its first and secondary data centers. This will make sure
that Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a
disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology
department needs to do a planned test. This test will show if they can
reliably switch from one datacenter to the other. It requires many teams to
prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.
They will switch all traffic back to the primary data center on *Tuesday,
October 27 2020*.
Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:What_is_MediaWiki%3F>, all editing
must stop while the switch is made. We apologize for this disruption, and
we are working to minimize it in the future.
*You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of
time.*
- You will not be able to edit for up to an hour on Tuesday, October 27.
The test will start at 14:00 UTC
<https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1603807200> (14:00 WET, 15:00 CET,
10:00 EDT, 19:30 IST, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 03:00
NZDT on Wednesday October 28).
- If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error
message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we
can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until
everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit.
But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.
*Other effects*:
- Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. Red links
might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is
already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual.
Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.
- There will be code freezes for the week of October 26, 2020.
Non-essential code deployments will not happen.
This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at
wikitech.wikimedia.org
<https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Switch_Datacenter#Schedule_for_2020_switch>.
Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more
notifications about this. A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30
minutes before this operation happens. *Please share this information with
your community.*
--
Benoît Evellin - Trizek (he/him)
Community Relations Specialist
Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/>