On Saturday, 13th April, we'll be taking the Spidergap site offline between 08:00 and 18:00 BST (UK time) while we migrate key services to Google Cloud.
What's happening
We're moving our website and database servers from Rackspace to Google Cloud to help us deliver a more robust, secure and scalable service.
Google Cloud will help us to do this while actually reducing the time we need to spend supporting the servers, which means we can spend more time on adding new features!
How it will affect you
The site will be unavailable for one or more periods between 08:00 and 18:00 BST on Saturday 13th April. We'll update our status page with updates during the migration.
We don't expect any wider impact:
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The update will be on a Saturday to minimize disruption
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The new servers will be continue to be based in Europe, and will not impact our adherence to GDPR
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The servers used for sending emails will not change, so you won't need to make any updates if you have whitelisted these.
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Google Cloud is already listed as one of our subprocessors, so there shouldn't need to be any additional checks by your legal or data security teams (though you should check your internal policies if unsure)
What actions you should take
If you are actively running assessments during this period, we recommend advising participants that the site will be unavailable on Saturday, 13th April between 08:00 and 18:00 BST (UK time).
Let us know if you have any questions — we'll be happy to help!
Questions and answers
Does using Google Cloud mean that servers and data will be hosted in the United States?
We explicitly state that all data and services are stored in the UK and the European Economic Area in our Terms of use and Privacy policy.
This won't change — Google Cloud has servers all over the world, and we'll continue to host all our services and data in the UK and the European Economic Area.
Do I need to whitelist the new servers for receiving emails?
No — we are not changing the servers we use to send emails. So no action is required!
Will the site be offline for the entire period from 08:00 to 18:00 BST?
Probably not — it's likely that the migration will take 3–5 hours during this period. However, to avoid inconvenience, we would recommend planning not to use the site at all during this period.