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Mike Labbe

Mike Labbe

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Due to a dual hard drive failure at 3am, all of my sites are down. Anyone who is hosting through me will be down a few more hours until everything is restored by the remote webhost. The drives have already been replaced, and operating system installed.

This just served to remind me how important backups are, even for websites!

The alternate link today for the Grumble/Matboard chat system is http://www.freejavachat.com/theme.php?room=grumble&theme=12

Mike
 
Mike I date my HD on the outside of the case. I replace all HD before they get to three years old. The old G had 33 months on it and I put a new system in it and gave it to a nephew and it went south a month later. HD motor quit. How that for timing.

framer

Now better do another backup!!!
 
They were server class drives in a RAID array, on a BSD machine.

Power supply failed and took out the whole server, including the RAID array (more than 2 drives), motherboard, and backups. He was copying backups to another drive, which was also fried by the same surge. (not a brilliant backup strategy) It looks like he will be going out of business because of this.

We're connected with a new server(hosting company) and it should be back to normal sometime Wednesday. I seriously questioned this new company about their backup procedures, and they seem OK.

It sure was a wake up call. It's a bad idea to back up to drives in the same machine or network, or to media (USB CHIP, Floppy, Zip Drive, etc) that stays physically connected to the machine all the time. A power surge (or theft/fire/storm/hackers/angry employees) could easily take everything in one shot. It's just as important for framers as it is for internet companies.

WCAF has a class about this, and some other important security concerns. (securing wireless networks, etc)

Mike
 
As of the wee hours of the morning, everything is back to normal. We have a new host.

As good as new, and faster too :)

Mike
 
Mike FYI I have a 2nd machine ready to launch if the G failed. All that would be needed it to upload two files from back up and restore the MYSQL DB. It's been tested before I launched The G. I figure under 30 minutes. The worst case would be a loss of a day of data. That's my insurance policy.

I have a third setup off site that could also be used within 24 hours with a loss of 1 - 7 days of data.


framer
 
This same thing happened to another forum I'm on. The whole system the hosting company was using went out like that. The one was off line for over 2 weeks before they were able to get it back up and running. Needless to say, the forum owner was not amused and has now switched hosts.
 
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