Infrastructure Migration

The NTP Pool is migrating its central infrastructure from Equinix Metal to two smaller, globally distributed clusters. Equinix Metal is sunsetting later this year, so the project must move.

Equinix Metal — originally Packet — hosted the NTP Pool’s central infrastructure for almost seven years. The web application, databases, DNS zone building, monitoring pipelines, observability, development and beta environments all ran there. It was the backbone that kept the entire pool management system running.

The relationship started with Packet, whose team went out of their way to help during an emergency migration in 2019. Equinix continued that same level of support after acquiring Packet. Their generosity made it possible for a volunteer-run project to operate infrastructure at a scale that would otherwise be out of reach. We would gladly have stayed — Equinix Metal was an excellent home for the project.

NetActuate has been running auxiliary services and a backup cluster alongside the Equinix system for a while now, and is stepping up to host one of the two primary clusters. Storage, build servers, and observability tools are already running there. The monitoring v4 system moved over earlier, which turned out to be a good first test — the expanded monitoring is more demanding than the old system, and the new setup handles it fine.

The web application, ClickHouse (monitoring data, GeoDNS logs and analytics), and the main databases are still on Equinix Metal. Those move over the coming weeks.

What to expect

DNS and NTP service won’t be affected. The monitoring system, website, and management interface will need a short maintenance window during cutover. Graphs on server pages and status.ntppool.org will show stale data while ClickHouse migrates — probably most of a day. I’ll post updates to the announcements forum as systems move.

Fastly has served the website and APIs since 2012.

This migration has been months of preparation — getting the new clusters set up, sequencing what moves when, testing as we go. Once the remaining systems are moved over, we’ll be on solid ground again.

Questions or want to follow along? Join the announcements forum.