[JJ]

First, I want to apologize to everyone for this disruption of service. I am promising to take steps to not have it happen again.

Well, after two days of downtime we are partially back-up. You will notice that if you have posted in the past two weeks, it is gone, and if you have signed-up in the past two weeks, you will have to sign-up again.

Please do feel free to get your posts that you lost back on here if you can, that was A LOT of good information in the past two weeks and I am EXTREMELY bummed we lost it.

If you uploaded avatars, they are gone too, please bear with me in the next day or so while I restore those.

If you donated and don't see your name in the donation list, let me know and I will replace it.

Let me know about any bugs- I will try and fix them as soon as I can.

The server's harddrive crashed and we lost all of the data on it. A word to the wise- don't rely on anybody else to do backups. So we rewind two weeks, but at least we have something.

Again, I wish to thank everybody for the support you have given this site and me in the past couple of years. This was just a bump in the road, there are GREAT things to come for this site.

I'm sorry, I will try my best to not have something like this happen again..

 

[STiNGER]

Look and Feel Two Weeks Younger! (..courtesy of dead server)

To avoid something like this happen it again, you might think about installing a RAID array. That way if one goes, you will have 1 or more back-ups ready. If you don't know what that is, and ignore this if you do, I'll explain.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) has a few forms. RAID 0 takes 2 disks and puts half of the info on one disk and the other half on the other. Bad thing is if you lose one, they both go bye bye. RAID 1 takes 2 disks and has one mirror the other (instant backup). You can go one step further and setup a RAID 5 system. This is 3 or more disks that have a parrity bit written on them so if you lose one disk, just replace it and the other disks will have enough to restore the missing data. If you lose 2 disks in RAID 5, you lose it all. Then you can go really expensive and do a RAID 10. That is the same as a RAID 5 but with a mirrored array as well.

So bottom line, get a basic IDE RAID controller and install at least a RAID 1 system so you won't have to do this again.

 

[amdmaxx]

advises:
use raid
schedule automatic daily backup of server to tape or CD-R drive...
posts are mostly text, take absolutely no space.. daily burning of posts or tape backup should be a religion..
We will post more and ketchup (catch up) on info..
NY auto show report from me coming soon...

 

[amdmaxx]

raid-5 should be good enough (USE 2 OUT OF 3)... or mirroring (1/2 the space useful) but more $$)..

To avoid something like this happen it again, you might think about installing a RAID array. That way if one goes, you will have 1 or more back-ups ready. If you don't know what that is, and ignore this if you do, I'll explain.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) has a few forms. RAID 0 takes 2 disks and puts half of the info on one disk and the other half on the other. Bad thing is if you lose one, they both go bye bye. RAID 1 takes 2 disks and has one mirror the other (instant backup). You can go one step further and setup a RAID 5 system. This is 3 or more disks that have a parrity bit written on them so if you lose one disk, just replace it and the other disks will have enough to restore the missing data. If you lose 2 disks in RAID 5, you lose it all. Then you can go really expensive and do a RAID 10. That is the same as a RAID 5 but with a mirrored array as well.

So bottom line, get a basic IDE RAID controller and install at least a RAID 1 system so you won't have to do this again.

 

[newbieSTI]

I just want to say thank you for your hard work of brining this site back to function.

 

[miked801]

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) has a few forms. RAID 0 takes 2 disks and puts half of the info on one disk and the other half on the other. Bad thing is if you lose one, they both go bye bye. RAID 1 takes 2 disks and has one mirror the other (instant backup). You can go one step further and setup a RAID 5 system. This is 3 or more disks that have a parrity bit written on them so if you lose one disk, just replace it and the other disks will have enough to restore the missing data. If you lose 2 disks in RAID 5, you lose it all. Then you can go really expensive and do a RAID 10. That is the same as a RAID 5 but with a mirrored array as well.

So bottom line, get a basic IDE RAID controller and install at least a RAID 1 system so you won't have to do this again.

actually, to clarify:
raid 0 is striping. that means you take 2+ drives and they appear as one "logical" drive.
raid 1 (also calles 0+1 or 10) is mirroring. you incur 50% loss of space and all data is mirrored onto a seperate volume (usually a seperate drive).
raid 5 is parity. you lose 33.33% of your total space and you can rebuild from the parity data stored on the other drives. typically this setup involves drives installed in multiples of 3 and takes a hot spare (replacement drive) in order to bring the system back up.
an excellent primer on raid (redundant array of inexpensive disks, btw) is available here.

raid is no substitute for backups... for instance if a mirrored disk has a problem it may corrupt its mirror before it goes hard-down, then you're scerwed (this happened to me about 3wks ago). this site is no clubsi or anything but it has a decent amount of traffic. i'd recommend full backups done on a weekly basis and incrementals done nightly.

 

[CoOlSlY]

As far as I know, RAID cost something (I'm just kidding, I know it cost something, we are a Network solution provider...)...

Also, as far as I know, when the user is a donating member it says "STi donating member" or something like this so I can only say since i'm not one of those:

CONTINUE THE GOOD WORK, raid is good but comes at a cost...

Hope everything will go fine.

No flames intended, I just want to say he might have work days and nights to put back the server online... Also, sorry for my bad english.

Sylvain

 

[amdmaxx]

many motherboards have raid on them, adds maybe $2 to the cost of it.

 

[CoOlSlY]

Not a good comment IMO... That means: CHANGING and BUYING a new motherboard wich I doubt is 2$ and buying a extra HDD wich I also doubt that is included in the 2$... Yes, if you are in the market of changing, it's worth the extra bucks but that's more 200-250$ than 2$ considering the Mtb and HDD's... If he's lucky, just by changing the mtb he's ok but often, it means new CPU, RAM and will always need a extra drive or 2 new drives...

I think he deserves a lot more congrats and for sure he's not covering the fee's associated running a newsgroups svr. (Bandwidth, server cost, fix ip address).

Anyway, I think I've talked enough.

Sylvain :wink:

 

[amdmaxx]

nothing to do with good or bad comment.. It's some knowledge for the future... Will be cheaper than buying a separate raid card..

 

[crazytrain]

All of this depends on who owns the server. If you are paying for web hosting (rather than co-locating) the use of RAID and/or tape backup is not up to you. Even if you specify a level of RAID, you have to take the ISP's word for it. JJ even implied that the ISP was supposed to be doing tape backups, and they were not. I don't think that you could assume they were using RAID if they told you they were. In any case, I have spent plenty of time recovering servers from the damage of RAID controllers both destroying themselves and the drives attached. It's definately not a catch-all. I congratulate JJ for being able to do what he did to get the forum back up in the time he did, considering that he did it on a weekend, had to work with an ISP, and did it as a volunteer. It's hard for me to gather the motivation to recover a server on a week night on a hardware I administer, even when I am on call and being paid.

Anyway, let's get back to talking about cars! I get enough of computer talk at work.