Devise MERLIN End-Of-Life what-then plan

TL;DR

• the server hosting merlin-platform.eu (sdcsfe03) should be able to (safely) stay online until nov-2020
• devise plan what to do with what until then and

Eurac's EOL statement

In accordance with the project proposal the MERLIN Platform will be running at EURAC for the next 5 years; unless, unforeseen technical problems arise. From a technical perspective, this is a rather long time to guarantee stability: the MERLIN Platform's software stack includes many components, e.g. Java, Tomcat, SOLR, and ANNIS; all with individual support and maintenance roadmaps from the respective developers and companies.

Of course, we have done our best to keep the current state of the platform running until the end of 2020.

However, by the end of 2020 even major components will have entered their 'end of life' phase, which means - above all - no security updates will be made available anymore. Furthermore, the operating system will enter its 'end of life' phase on November 30, 2020.

Thus, we would like to clearly communicate, that after 5 years time the MERLIN Platform will be shut down at EURAC.

Any continuation after that time, will need to be done within the framework of a new project, which will need to start several months before the scheduled shut-down in order to allow for a smooth transition. At the moment there are still 5 years ahead of us, but it is crucial to keep this in mind.

EOL stats for individual applications

• CentOS
• Solr
• PostgreSQL
• ANNIS
• Tomcat

Inhaltliche & designbezogene Fragen zur statischen Website

• Entscheidung: Keine weitgehenden Änderungen an den Website-Inhalten
• Hauptsächlich werden überarbeitet:
  • Die Startseite [z.B. neu: Informationen zur Suche, Verlinkung des Korpus, Erläuterung Downloadoptionen und Integration wichtiger vorhandener Informationen der Startseite]
  • „über MERLIN“
  • Etwaige grobe Fehler in den Inhaltsseiten werden ausgebessert
  • Dokumentationsseite wird aktualisiert (Karin Schöne: Email an Kolleg/-innen mit Bitte um Zusendung bibliografischer Angaben zu MERLIN-bezogenen Publikationen; Katrin Wisniewski übernimmt dies ab 2020 in einem jährlichen Turnus)
• Zuständig für die Änderungen der Inhalte: Karin Schöne, Katrin Wisniewski
• Das derzeitige CMS wird nicht ersetzt, auch wenn MERLIN auf mobilen Endgeräten nicht gut darstellbar ist; hier kann evtl. mit einer Setzung größerer Zwischenräume eine niedrigschwellige Verbesserung erreicht werden
• Die Domain bleibt erhalten (EURAC übernimmt die Kosten)
• Vorgehen: Überarbeitung der statischen Website
  • Schritt 1: Zugang zu Gitlab für Karin Schöne & Katrin Wisniewski wird von Egon Stemle und Verena Lyding zur Verfügung gestellt (#6 (closed))
  • Schritt 2: Karin Schöne & Katrin Wisniewski erarbeiten einen Vorschlag direkt im Repository,
  • Schritt 3: Erneutes Treffen in der heutigen Runde,
  • Schritt 4: Information der Partner

including @Verena.Lyding

changed title from Devise MERLIN End-Of-Life backup plan to Devise MERLIN End-Of-Life what's-next plan

changed title from Devise MERLIN End-Of-Life what's-next plan to Devise MERLIN End-Of-Life what-then plan

changed due date to November 25, 2019

changed due date to ~1y earlier to get ourselves a reminder - (well) in advance...

changed the description

CentOS

The main OS of the server currently hosting the merlin platform is CentOS 6.

• Full Updates: May 10th, 2017
• Maintenance Updates: November 30th, 2020

Source: https://wiki.centos.org/About/Product

marked the checklist item CentOS as completed

Solr

Quotation from adriane's original "moving MERLIN infrastructure to EURAC" mail thread:

Although some of the bug fixes would be useful, we've decided not to move to a newer version of ANNIS for the final platform. A newer version of solr might work without modifications, but I have no idea what's changed since I set everything up last spring. So, the versions we're running are:

ANNIS 3.1.7

solr 4.7.1

As of 07-Oct-2019, the current Solr versions are:

• Solr 8.2.0
  Solr 8.2.0 is the most recent Apache Solr release.

• Solr 7.7.2
  Solr 7.7.2 is the last release in the 7.x series.

and

• Solr 4.10.14 (the last 4.-release) is dated 2015-03-03

The Solr Upgrade Notes currently say:

Upgrading to 8.0 from 7.x Releases
The upgrade from 7.x to Solr 8.0 introduces several major changes that you should be aware of before upgrading. These changes are described in the section Major Changes in Solr 8. It’s strongly recommended that you do a thorough review of that section before starting your upgrade.

Upgrading to 8.0 from pre-7.x Versions
Users upgrading from versions of Solr prior to 7.x are strongly encouraged to consult CHANGES.txt for the details of all changes since the version they are upgrading from.

The upgrade from Solr 6.x to Solr 7.0 introduced several major changes that you should be aware of before upgrading. Please do a thorough review of the section Major Changes in Solr 7 before starting your upgrade.

A summary of the significant changes between Solr 5.x and Solr 6.0 is in the section Major Changes from Solr 5 to Solr 6.

marked the checklist item Solr as completed

changed the description

marked the checklist item PostgreSQL as completed

PostgrSQL

Quotation from adriane's original "moving MERLIN infrastructure to EURAC" mail thread:

Our server is running Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS with tomcat7 and postgres 9.1.

We upgraded the original PostgreSQL version (as was used in Tübingen) from 9.1 to 9.2. The 9. releases are supported as follows:

Version | Current minor | Supported | First Release | Final Release

9.6 | 9.6.15 | Yes | September 29, 2016 | November 11, 2021
9.5 | 9.5.19 | Yes | January 7, 2016 | February 11, 2021
9.4 | 9.4.24 | Yes | December 18, 2014 | February 13, 2020
9.3 | 9.3.25 | No | September 9, 2013 | November 8, 2018
9.2 | 9.2.24 | No | September 10, 2012 | November 9, 2017

marked the checklist item ANNIS as completed

ANNIS

Quotation from adriane's original "moving MERLIN infrastructure to EURAC" mail thread:

Although some of the bug fixes would be useful, we've decided not to move to a newer version of ANNIS for the final platform. [...] So, the versions we're running are:

ANNIS 3.1.7

As of 07-Oct-2019, the current ANNIS version is:

• Current stable ANNIS distribution: Version 3.6.0

Full upgrade will be needed because

Whenever the first or second number of the version changes you have to re-import the corpora into a newly initialized database.

changed the description

Tomcat

Quotation from adriane's original "moving MERLIN infrastructure to EURAC" mail thread:

Our server is running Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS with tomcat7 and postgres 9.1.

As of 07-Oct-2019, the current Tomcat version is:

• Tomcat 9

Apache Tomcat 9.x is the current focus of development. It builds on Tomcat 8.0.x and 8.5.x and implements the Servlet 4.0, JSP 2.3, EL 3.0, WebSocket 1.1 and JASPIC 1.1 specifications (the versions required by Java EE 8 platform).

However, Tomcat 7 has not yet announced its end-of-life and is considered 'still supported'.

marked the checklist item Tomcat as completed

changed due date to March 16, 2020