Hair pulling
Monday, January 5, 2004 by Frogboy | Discussion: WinCustomize News
This is just unbelievable. I am sure many fo you, like us, have dealt with plenty of machines that run fine 24/7 over years and years.
Today WinCustomize lost another server to total hardware failure. This is the THIRD server in 3 months. This one in some ways was worse and the timing was particularly bad.
The SQL database was on that machine. Luckily, because of our previous experiences, we have backups. But because of an additional glitch, the auto-backup didn't work which means we lost all the database changes since our last manual backup which was just before we left on the holidays. Net result is that we lost any uploads between the time we went away for Christmas (22nd?) and yesterday.
You can imagine how frustrated we are. Oh, we have a pretty good idea the commonolity on this (all 3 servers were quite very new, from the same provider with the same OS). But we won't get into public finger pointing.
It's just incredible though. We have el-cheapo servers here that have run 24/7 for the past 5 years without any problems.
We'll have the libraries restored with what we have. If authors who have recently submitted stuff could resubmit their stuff we appreciate it and apologize for the inconvenience. Ironically, we have the files (the crash in November wiped out the physical files but the database was fine). I'm just glad we keep backups.
Thanks for your patience and support. Unfortunatley, we are now down a main server again. This one was our fastest/newest (and most expensive) machine unfortunately.
If anyone needs me, I'll be over here pulling my hair out. 
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Reply #42 Monday, January 5, 2004 10:15 PM
Cartier, thanks for your suggestions but believe me, we knwo what we're doing. 
1) It takes several servers to run this site including multiple dedicated SQL boxes.
2) Every server that has gone down was running Win 2K3.
3) We plan to migrate to ASP.NET but you have to understand - our IT dept (Stardock's IT dept.) is salaried. Which means cost is an issue. Compiled code is much faster but it is not a major issue at this time.
4) SDCentral was unaffected.
Reply #43 Tuesday, January 6, 2004 4:03 AM
Frog, save yourself the aggrivation. Build your OWN boxes, and maintain them right at Stardock. It'll be cheaper and better for you in the long run. The best server I've seen ran 6 1/2 years without a crash, and the guy built it himself. Course, that was NT4 on a Xeon 533 with 2 gigs of ram...
Seriously. I think you'll do better with some homebrew boxes.
My $.02 
Reply #44 Tuesday, January 6, 2004 8:11 AM
Reply #46 Tuesday, January 6, 2004 11:12 PM
Sad, but I would have happily bought a new system from one of the big guys a few years ago. Now I'd rather just purchase individual components at a premium, just to know what exactly I was putting in my machine. Profits from computer sales continue to decline and I'm now thoroughly convinced that mfr's are looking for any way possible to cheapen their product. Hope I'm wrong, but I've been disappointed with just about every one of the machines I've purchased in the last 3 years.
Sorry to ramble at such length. Great job WC on getting things up and running again!!
-C77
Reply #47 Wednesday, January 7, 2004 2:21 PM
That explains the software problem
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Reply #41 Monday, January 5, 2004 8:27 PM
But as has been said before, we're all behind you and would help in any way humanly possible to get things back to *normal* again.
I don't think another subscription drive is a bad idea. Considering the circustances it may be your best bet.
I hope everything goes well from now on.