Sorry everyone for the lengthy downtime yesterday! Yesterday was one of the days where simply nothing worked together. A seemingly harmless routine update led to a database crash, then the webmeister didn't react fast enough (what a jerk! ) and in the end the datacenter overlooked the trouble ticket.
Hope I learned a lesson from that and can make a few improvements that will make a similar incident less likely or hopefully even impossible.
"Never argue with an idiot. People won't know who's who."
We might take that road if we need the bandwidth of two servers, but for now it's really a financial thing and also a technical one. I already have a steep learning curve behind me, but before every detail of the single server has become boring routine, setting up a system like that would probably just _increase_ the risk of downtime.
Anyway, it's good to know you have experience with that - when the time arrives, I'll probably need some advice and moral support...
"Never argue with an idiot. People won't know who's who."
Yes doctor, I am sick. Sick of those who are spineless. Sick of those who feel self-entitled. Sick of those who are hypocrites. Yes doctor, an army is forming. Yes doctor, there will be a war. Yes doctor, there will be blood.....
Mad'sWife wrote:Feel free to ask me any questions.
Ok. Isn't setting up a redundant system with a database involved extremely complicated? With static pages it shouldn't be a biggie, but for mirroring a forum database both servers would need to be in sync virutally every given second. Also wondering if syncing those databases wouldn't cause a lot of extra traffic. The vast majority of stuff I've seen on the net is splitting it up into a main and a database server...
"Never argue with an idiot. People won't know who's who."
We actually have several servers in our production environment that are both web servers and databse servers. Doubletake the software I mentioned before replicates both os and database.
There is also a simpler solution but will not give you 100% up time. Backing up the server including database via tape, disk, or flat file backup to tape or disk is also a solution.
You can back everything up prior to update or upgrade and if something goes wrong you can restore to the point in time just prior to update.
These are just some suggestions. All new software you are not familiar with seem a bit duanting or overwhelming but once you get into it it's usually not as bad as it seems.
The question about extra traffic is no it should not bog down either server. We have ours to replicate every 30 seconds.
Ok got it - I thought you were talking about load balancing, but if I get you right you mean an (almost) real-time backup system with the ability to redirect the traffic to the backup server in emergency cases?
We're doing daily backups anyway, but that of course doesn't help very much in a situation like yesterday.
Wow, just took a look... not exactly freeware, hehe.
"Never argue with an idiot. People won't know who's who."
Cafe Home
Fantasy Football
Fantasy Basketball
Fantasy Hockey
by menyak » Wed Oct 15, 2003 8:46 am 
) and in the end the datacenter overlooked the trouble ticket.
