The Smithsonian Institution, host for BHL’s technical infrastructure and servers, is moving to a new data center for the purposes of upgrades and modernization. This page is meant to provide details of the progress and what to expect at different phases of the project as it relates to BHL’s website. BHL is committed to remaining operational during all phases of the project, with some small exceptions listed below.
Please watch this space for updates as well as banners posted on BHL during the periods of maintenance.
Overview
BHL has four servers that will be moved during this process. Some servers are redundant and will be moved separately for continuous operation. Others will be unavailable for up to 12 hours. The servers include two for the database, one for Macaw, and one for the full-text search feature on BHL’s main website.
BHL also uses a number of virtual servers that will be moved separately and will result in a smaller disruption, if at all.
Below is the schedule, a brief summary of the work, and expected effects or downtime during the maintenance period.
Planning – COMPLETE
BHL Staff with assistance from Smithsonian IT staff will develop and execute a pre-move test plan. The plan includes steps to ensure that when powered on, all services required by BHL start up normally and that any connections to others systems are correctly re-established. The test plan also includes turning off the power to each server to test that there are no mechanical problems when the server is powered on. All servers will be backed up before the tests begin.
If there is a mechanical problem, service will be rendered immediately but the server may be unavailable for up to 24 hours.
Move Event #1 – COMPLETE
What: The server hosting BHL’s Confluence site will move.
Effect: BHL’s Confluence site will be unavailable for up to 8-12 hours.
Move Event #2 – COMPLETE
What: BHL’s application server, a Virtual Machine, will move.
Effect: Parts of BHL will unavailable or delayed for 15 minutes to 2 hours: Custom PDFs (“Select pages to download”), OCR text content, email notifications, Article PDF downloads.
Testing Physical Servers – COMPLETE
What: Full power down test of each server.
Effect: BHL’s search will be interrupted for up to 30 minutes and will be replaced by a simpler database search. Macaw will be unavailable for up to 30 minutes.
Move Event #3 – COMPLETE
What: Moving BHL’s secondary database server, Macaw server
Effect:. Macaw will be unavailable for 8 to 24 hours. BHL will continue running normally.
Move Event #4 – COMPLETE
What: Moving BHL’s primary database server (in secondary mode), full text search server
Effect: BHL’s search will fall back to a simpler database search for 8 to 24 hours. Some features, such as downloading PDFs, will be unavailable.
Move Event #5 – COMPLETE
When: 9 September 2025, 2 hours starting at 17:00 EDT (21:00 UTC)
13 September 2025, 2 hours starting at 08:00 EDT (12:00 UTC)
What: Moving BHL’s web servers, one each day
Effect: There may be some small interruptions while the servers restart.
(Last Updated: 19 September 2025)