Hello,

I 'd like to inform everyone of what we consider a big change (for the better) in the Datacenter Switchover process. The full rationale, planning and implementation is documented at

https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Switch_Datacenter/Recurring,_Equinox-bas...

and it includes a TL;DR that I am pasting below for everyone's convenience:

Site Reliability Engineering will, starting September 2023, run a data center Switchover every 6 months, in the week of the solar Equinox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox, namely the *work weeks containing March 21st and September 21st*. If you are interested to learn more about Switchovers and why we perform them, or already know what they are and want to learn more about how this proposal would impact your workflows or the Wikimedia Movement, please read on.

We hope that making the Switchover dates and duration predictable will allow the teams involved and/or utilizing a Switchover, as well as the entire movement reap the benefits we anticipate and document in the doc linked above.

Regards, -- Alexandros Kosiaris Principal Site Reliability Engineer Wikimedia Foundation