WE HAVE MOVED

[onezero]

Good news/Bad News.

Good news - we've moved to a new hosting provider that actually works weekends. It was never an issue before - but in the last month, because of changes at our long-time host - it now was an issue. So, reliability should be back to what it used to be (continual).

Bad news - the old host was backing up the wrong database (yet another reason to fire them). Our last snapshot was from late Tuesday - so all the posts from Wednesday through Friday (when the site went down again) are gone.

Sorry about that.

[TurkeyVolumeGuessingMan]

Well, at least you know what the problem is. I've noticed that the forum has been unavailable on weekends for some reason. It sucks about losing posts, but hopefully this will fix it.

[Salamander]

I can't understand why a hosting company would be down in the weekends (unless they're trying to go out of business real fast ). Hopefully this new host will be better.

I see the "Home"-link bug has been fixed

[DaveVan]

As a retired Sr System Analyst for a top 5 world wide bank......sounds like you made a good move. Back-up is so easy and the standards for DB back up are getting close to 50 years old!!!......so failure on your host is just wrong. Thanks

[Jonas Calhoun]

Back-up is so easy

Tell me about it. I was using their automated tools this last week to get DB snapshots, at least when the DB was up enough I could. Last one I had from their tools was Thursday. I'm kinda a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy when it comes to data, so I used the boards tools to make a backup on Tuesday--but it's a manual process, and with the day job...I couldn't do it every day. Blarg.

Here's to hoping.

[DaveVan]

No blame to you.....the host SHOULD handle that stuff.....if they want to keep their customers.

I always tell this story about our 'state of the art Direst Access Storage Device (DASD) farm the bank opened in 1984. It was a dedicated building with power supply, environmental and fire systems that were cutting edge. About the size of a basketball court, cost millions and took 6 full time employees. But it stored almost half a TB!!!! Half of the drives were storage the other half back-up. It cost millions and IBM brought people from all over the world to see it. Back-up was semi auto but still took a person to change out DASD platters that needed to go off site.

Today you can have 2 TB storage on your desk, about $100, auto back -up with ZERO employees.
What happened to the forum shouldn't.......but host sounds sketchy! thx

[naoto]

No blame to you.....the host SHOULD handle that stuff.....if they want to keep their customers.

I always tell this story about our 'state of the art Direst Access Storage Device (DASD) farm the bank opened in 1984. It was a dedicated building with power supply, environmental and fire systems that were cutting edge. About the size of a basketball court, cost millions and took 6 full time employees. But it stored almost half a TB!!!! Half of the drives were storage the other half back-up. It cost millions and IBM brought people from all over the world to see it. Back-up was semi auto but still took a person to change out DASD platters that needed to go off site.

Today you can have 2 TB storage on your desk, about $100, auto back -up with ZERO employees.
What happened to the forum shouldn't.......but host sounds sketchy! thx

I frequently worry about the current state of IT -- with the increasing amounts of data involved, you'd think it would be reasonable make sure your IT staff is better trained than before. Unfortunately it seems that I'm running into more clueless idiots in IT as time passes. It's annoying when I've got to deal with supposedly "highly trained" and "certified" "data professional" making stupid mistakes like NOT performing backups -- or NOT knowing any information about the network they're managing (believe it or not, I've run into situation where I asked the IT guy to get to the server console -- i.e. physically access the server, and I got the response "where do I click to find out where the server is?").

What is most frightening for me is it seems like we're heading into situation like in the short story "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster:
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html

[DaveVan]

I'll just say I loved my job, did it well if I say so myself.......BUT so happy to be retired.

[Tracy White]

I frequently worry about the current state of IT -- with the increasing amounts of data involved, you'd think it would be reasonable make sure your IT staff is better trained than before.

Unfortunately, most management sees IT and support as an expense and not an investment. I work as an outsourced IT consultant (note: not "off shore IT") and it's a constant struggle to get most companies to think of their equipment and people as something that you put money into to get money out of. "The Cloud" is also throwing a curve ball in that consolidation is making it harder for people to get experience. It's all through a web interface, so you never learn the underlying technology, just the particular interface du jour.

It's an extension of the myopic focus on next quarter's earnings over the long term health and viability of a company or department and I don't see it getting any better.

[naoto]

Ugh... "The Cloud"
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/is- ... -computer/