Dear members,
Two hard drives on our server failed at the same time at around 6pm Eastern, catching me completely off guard in the middle of a ton of classwork. Alan notified me the board wasn't working, and I spent the next 9 straight hours (without getting out of my chair) bringing it back online. I had a technician drive 30 miles to the data center where our web site is physically based, in order to diagnose the problem on-site. Once the problem had been stabilized, restoration was a painstaking process that involved me copying the forum database file by file to a backup server. We are currently running on this backup system, and I anticipate that within the next week or two, we will move back to a brand new server replacing the original one that has failed. So, there may be some limited downtime when that occurs, but I will give you notice. The benefit of that upgrade will be a faster processor, more memory and more disk space, which translates into a better forum experience for all.
As for me, I have two huge assignments due early on Thursday, and was planning on using this evening to work on them, so I don't know what I'm going to do about those now... but for the moment, the site is back online in a limited capacity. Some site features are offline (e.g., www.amtraktrains.com just redirects to the forum), but at least the discussions should be in their normal working order. I even brought back the email functionality so that people can continue to get email alerts and messages sent to them.
It's time for bed now, and I don't anticipate being very reachable at all tomorrow (Wednesday), but if another emergency occurs I will be on top of it. Keep your fingers crossed and thanks, as always, for your patience and support.
Good tidings,
Anthony
Two hard drives on our server failed at the same time at around 6pm Eastern, catching me completely off guard in the middle of a ton of classwork. Alan notified me the board wasn't working, and I spent the next 9 straight hours (without getting out of my chair) bringing it back online. I had a technician drive 30 miles to the data center where our web site is physically based, in order to diagnose the problem on-site. Once the problem had been stabilized, restoration was a painstaking process that involved me copying the forum database file by file to a backup server. We are currently running on this backup system, and I anticipate that within the next week or two, we will move back to a brand new server replacing the original one that has failed. So, there may be some limited downtime when that occurs, but I will give you notice. The benefit of that upgrade will be a faster processor, more memory and more disk space, which translates into a better forum experience for all.
As for me, I have two huge assignments due early on Thursday, and was planning on using this evening to work on them, so I don't know what I'm going to do about those now... but for the moment, the site is back online in a limited capacity. Some site features are offline (e.g., www.amtraktrains.com just redirects to the forum), but at least the discussions should be in their normal working order. I even brought back the email functionality so that people can continue to get email alerts and messages sent to them.
It's time for bed now, and I don't anticipate being very reachable at all tomorrow (Wednesday), but if another emergency occurs I will be on top of it. Keep your fingers crossed and thanks, as always, for your patience and support.
Good tidings,
Anthony
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