Posted on 01/22/2017 1:16:49 PM PST by foreverfree
Edited on 01/22/2017 3:06:18 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
We waited 8 years for a win; then waited from Nov to Jan 20th to be able to celebrate together, here. Then on the day of inauguration, the site goes down. It was really heart breaking.
Couple hundred thousand dollars and more is raised annually in private donations, so if people who donate would like an explanation as to what happened or don’t feel they need to be attacked for asking.
I don't mind those who say they would like to know. As far as entitled, I think not. They're being criticized not for the question, but for the way it was delivered.
The picture created is of a 300 lb lesbian stomping into the bakery, demanding to see the manager.
Oops...”Womyn in sensible shoes.”
The short answer explained by Jim Robinson in another thread was that the server that crashed before crashed again hard before a replacement could be installed with all the necessary forum info loaded.
Basically a tired server bit the big one; I’m going to guess it was the motherboard because just about anything else would have been up and running fairly quickly. I’m assuming some kind of raid system is used so when one hard drive fails a notice is sent to the administrator to replace it while the other drives keep the site going. When the motherboard goes down, that’s it, the entire system shuts down. A network adapter could be replaced quickly enough assuming one is on hand.
In a perfect world there would be server redundancies to come on line that silently run in the background keeping up with the forum as it is made by each post. It could be switched remotely while a human fixes or replaces the original server with minimal downtime. At least that’s my understanding of it. I was only a lowly computer tech for a number of years before retiring more than a decade ago so I’m sure much has changed since then.
Now where these servers are kept and how far the administrators are from them is your guess. I do know much can be done remotely except in the case of a complete hardware failure like the motherboard or network adapter that allows communication between server and admin.
That’s about all I could glean from what I’ve read about the issue. Oh, one other thing, Jim did say he was kicking his own butt by not getting that server hardware replaced sooner. The timing is unfortunate for sure but life continues, Trump was sworn in, and we are back up and running. I have a feeling the Robinson’s are going to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again through available technology and the funding they are provided on a quarterly basis.
Thanks.
Agreed. It’s easy to get a little paranoid in this situation. There really are many out there who wish to destroy us. On the other hand though, we cannot systematically attack our supporters......I think the Board Admin’s should have posted a clear and prominent explanation of the failure, if, for nothing else, to at least put our minds to rest that this incredibly poor timing was a coincidence and not an attack. We support and rely on this Board, we are not the enemy.
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