We've talked about this for some time, but now's the time to start the migration to the new stats db hardware. We are doing it now and everything looks ok so far. We are keeping several safeguards in place in case there is a problem.
IF there is a problem with the stats, please bear with us. There are several links we need to update and it's possible that a link is still pointing to the old db. Also, in case of emergency, we are keeping track of all the new stats from this point in a special place, so even in the worst case scenario, we can just go back to the old db and input all the new stats into it.
So, the stats will be down for a bit and there may be some inconsistencies for a day or so while we get all the links updated. The good news is that we'll have much faster stats soon, which will be great for all of us.
UPDATE 1
The migration is now done and it looks like everything is working. We've tested out the stats pages and done a small manual stats update. All looks good. However, since stats are so important, before diving in and just putting everything back to automatic updates, I wanted to see if donors see any problems. If you do, please report them in our forum (http://foldingforum.org).
UPDATE 2
It looks like everything has migrated well. We have the stats back on normal updates and those updates are going fast (under 10 minutes). With the new hardware, I bet we can make it even faster, but that's for later. We have turned back on certain features we previously turned off (eg CPU counts). We have more ambitious plans for the future, especially ideally getting to the point where the stats are never off line (even during updates), which is now possible with the new hardware.