Forum Backup

[Sparks]

Hi Everyone,

Bream and I are two new admins brought in by Dave to look at sorting out some of the techy problems you've been having and to upgrade the site.  The first thing we're doing is sorting out the backups.  I'll be taking the forums down in a few minutes for a backup, it should only be for 5 minutes or so.  We'll be planning to do this early morning each day.

Sparks

[Sparks]

All finished - you probably didn't even notice!

[Bream]

I did.

[Graham C]

[Heid]

Ta 'Leccy Man and Fish

[Trace]

I was still snoring!

[ifm]

 

Don't forget to backup the backup 

[tikay]

Thanks Bream & Sparks.

I've had loads of texts & PM's asking "what happened THIS time?", as we have a history of Forum "downs".

As you know, from when we met, I'm pretty hacked off about what I consider un-necessary "downs".

Can you, for the benefit of the blondeites, explain - in little words - what our problem is, 'cos I sure as hell can't!

I really appreciated your help the other day, by the way - thanks!

[Bream]

Morning gents and gentesses,

The down time that occured on the 6th was due to a blown fuse on the power supply that provides power to the machine that hosts this site. No secondary power supply had been installed to provide power, so the machine just died.

Once the fuse had been replaced and the machine brought back up, the website was fine, but the database that underlies this forum, having been caught with its pants down - still had them down and was confused enough not to know where they were or how to pull them back up again, i.e. some of its indexes were shot.

The resolution was to rebuild these indexes and once this was done, the forum started to work ok again. Enormous thanks go to Rhowena for helping us out with this.  Restoring a backup wasn't an option btw as it turns out that the database wasn't included in the backup provided to us - this issue's sorted now.

They've now installed a secondary power supply that should kick in if the same problem occurs again.

However, you've had some dodgy performance and downtime recently, apparently unrelated to any power faiures so we've been looking at how things can be improved. There are a number of things that can be done to optimise the performance of both the underlying database and the forum software that uses it. These haven't been implemented to date so we're testing a few things offline and then we'll apply them to the site. It'll be a question of 'suck it and see' to some extent but we're pretty confident that the forum'll be behaving a bit better in the future.

Thanks for bearing with us you lot. 

Cheers

[Trace]

Buy it some braces and a belt - just in case!

Thanks guys.

Tray
xxxx

[TightEnd]

Morning gents and gentesses,

The down time that occured on the 6th was due to a blown fuse on the power supply that provides power to the machine that hosts this site. No secondary power supply had been installed to provide power, so the machine just died.

Once the fuse had been replaced and the machine brought back up, the website was fine, but the database that underlies this forum, having been caught with its pants down - still had them down and was confused enough not to know where they were or how to pull them back up again, i.e. some of its indexes were shot.

The resolution was to rebuild these indexes and once this was done, the forum started to work ok again. Enormous thanks go to Rhowena for helping us out with this.  Restoring a backup wasn't an option btw as it turns out that the database wasn't included in the backup provided to us - this issue's sorted now.

They've now installed a secondary power supply that should kick in if the same problem occurs again.

However, you've had some dodgy performance and downtime recently, apparently unrelated to any power faiures so we've been looking at how things can be improved. There are a number of things that can be done to optimise the performance of both the underlying database and the forum software that uses it. These haven't been implemented to date so we're testing a few things offline and then we'll apply them to the site. It'll be a question of 'suck it and see' to some extent but we're pretty confident that the forum'll be behaving a bit better in the future.

Thanks for bearing with us you lot. 

Cheers

Now that is a good explanation. I can understand it, therefore it's good. Ta

[tikay]

Wow, a techie that talks proper English!

Thanks Mr Terchie. I think I love you.

Keep us informed as to how it goes, please.

[ifm]

A fuse wow!
I was watching a program about the small British firm that entered a team into LeMans, they dropped out of the top ten with about 6 hours left because a jubilee clip broke on the water hose for the radiator.
A 50p part put the brakes on a multimillion pound investment, amazing really.

[Sparks]

Hi again,

I'm about to take the site down again for another manual backup.  We'll have these automated in a few days.  The forums should be back in a few minutes.  I'm also going to tweak some database settings that should speed up the forum (when reading rather than posting) - let me know if you think the forum feels a bitter faster.  Anyway I'm off to do a backup.

Sparks

[Sparks]

All's well again.  Post here if you notice any performance improvement.

Sparks