Red Infrastructure Modernization

Enhancing, scaling and improving Red Multisites

Technology Solutions migrated the infrastructure that supports and maintains Red Multisites from a physical data center to a cloud-based Website Operations Platform supported by Pantheon.

The transition to a Website Operations Platform will not only improve Red’s stability and scalability, it will also help alleviate the obstacles our development teams encounter so we can focus on other enhancements and innovation.

Radhika Shah Reddy  |  Director, Software Development and Delivery

Project Goal Heading link

The goal of this project is to migrate Red infrastructure from a physical data center to a cloud-based platform supported by Pantheon, as well as updating our processes, procedures, training, and the development and deployment of workflows to best utilize the various management tools that come with the Pantheon infrastructure.

Benefits

  • Improves workflows
  • Minimizes Outages
  • Enables Scalability
  • Enhances DevOps capabilities
  • Allows reallocation of staffing resources

Risks

  • System failures
  • Site downtimes
  • Loss of information
  • Storage limits

Timeline Heading link

This project was initiated in March 2022 and was completed on Monday, September 5, 2022, at 11:59 PM. All website infrastructure was migrated successfully.

Frequently Asked Questions Heading link

Technology Solutions migrated the Red Multisite Infrastructure to Pantheon, a website operations platform that improves the stability and scalability of Red.

With Pantheon, UIC’s Red websites are guaranteed to remain 99.99% operational during traffic spikes or server reboots and can expand without the risk of outgrowing infrastructure, and optimizing staff resources.

The Red infrastructure migration was successfully completed on September 5, 2022.

Since the first Red site launched in November 2016, Red has grown to more than 500 live websites with another 228 in development (as of June 2022). Due to its significant growth, the Red network is at risk of outgrowing its current infrastructure, and our legacy servers lack the ability to properly handle a large influx of traffic. Moreover, staff spends 75+ hours a week on bug fixes, enhancing site performance, and addressing technical debt – leaving no time for innovation or development.

The transition to Pantheon guarantees high stability and scalability for our public-facing sites, offers a more resilient and mature infrastructure than our in-house servers, and has many other benefits including:

  • Minimizes Red site outages & downtime
    Guaranteed 99.99% operational uptime so Red websites will be able to handle traffic spikes and server reboots without bringing other sites down
  • Allows staff resource reallocation & optimization
    Pantheon is a self-sustaining platform that will enable teams to reallocate resources and focus on other enhancements or projects
  • Enables automation and agile workflows for fast deployments
    Increases ease of software update management and support for maintaining multisite security, reliability and performance
  • Grants access to data & insights
    Provides reporting on web activity related to infrastructure, security and logging. This helps find, debug, and isolate current or potential problems on sites.
  • Offers collaboration tools
    Pantheon has developer-friendly tools and workflows that will help strengthen our growing Red developer community and encourages collaboration
  • Includes automated backups
    A best practice for web management, automated site backups are snapshots of all the files and data on websites and can be recalled if necessary.

Technology Solutions will begin the Red infrastructure migration on Tuesday, August 30 at 5:00 PM, and is scheduled to be completed by Monday, September 5, 2022 at 11:59 PM. Downtime is not expected to occur and sites will remain operational and accessible online.

Starting Tuesday, August 30th at 5:00PM CT, Technology Solutions will begin sending Red files to the Pantheon cloud servers. As a result of this initial file transfer, any changes entered in Red websites by Red Admins between Tuesday, August 30th at 5:00PM CT and Monday, September 5th at 11:59pm CT, will NOT appear on the new environment after the migration is complete. 

 

Yes, Red websites will remain operational and will be accessible online during the migration.

Yes, all Red Websites will be impacted by this change. Downtime is not expected, but may occur.

Any outages or failures can, and will be, reported at the UIC Help Center (help.uic.edu) under the UIC IT Service Notices section. Users can report issues or problems by selecting Report an IT Problem.

The today.uic.edu, emergency.uic.edu and main uic.edu websites will not be impacted.

Red admins and users should:

  • Avoid making changes to existing Red websites beginning Tuesday, August 30th at 5:00pm CT through Monday, September 5th at 11:59pm CT.  If changes are necessary, please read below:
    • While changes made to Red site(s) during the transition period will be reflected, they will not appear on your Red site(s) following migration completion on September 5. That is, websites will be restored to their status pre-migration. Updates and edits will not be reflected.
    • If changes must be made during this period, we strongly recommend Red admins keep track of changes and update Red websites with the changes again after September 5th.
  • Be aware that data submitted on Red website Gravity forms* during this period will not migrate to the new environment. To remediate this issue, Red Admins can:
    1. Configure forms to send data to an email address
      Visit docs.gravityforms.com/configuring-notifications-in-gravity-forms for configuration instructions.
    2. Temporarily disable forms
      Go to docs.gravityforms.com/edit-forms/#h-form-actions for instructions on bulk deactivating and activating forms in Red.
    3. Submit Data Retrieval Request
      In rare circumstances, Technology Solutions will be able to retrieve data from Red servers. This will be handled on a case-by-case basis and no timeline can be provided.

*Links to non-Gravity forms such as Box links, Slate forms, Google forms, or Qualtrics surveys, etc., will not be impacted and do not need to be disabled.

This migration will not change the Red user interface or how Red websites are managed.

During the migration period, Technology Solutions will be transferring all Red Multisite data from our servers to Pantheon’s infrastructure. During this period, new data and information entered in Red will have a very high risk of not being captured properly, migrated accurately, or can fail to transfer over successfully.

As a result, during the migration, Red admins and users should not add, edit, create, draft or enter new content into Red, and site Forms should be temporarily disabled.

Links to outside websites or forms, such as Box links, Google forms or Qualtrics surveys, will not be impacted and do not need to be disabled.

To report an outage or ask a question, visit the UIC Help Center and select Report an IT Problem or Ask an IT Question.

Have a question? Contact us.