ELi5: When a server is taken down for routine “scheduled maintenance”, what is typically being done to the servers while they cannot be accessed?
In: Technology
Sometimes it’s literally OS updates, like a Windows update. The website is small enough to only have one server (not hundreds like big companies) so when that server is off or rebooting the website won’t work.
Sometimes it’s just easier to change stuff, like migrate data, when no users are using the website right now. As a rough simplification and very ELI5, imagine Reddit changing where on their servers they store posts and comments – while they’re moving all posts to a new location (database), tons of new posts and comments will be added to the old location so they’d never finish the move. Thus, services are shut down, then stuff is getting moved / reorganized / whatever, then services are made available again.
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