Author Topic: DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014  (Read 3351 times)

AdeV

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DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014
« on: September 26, 2014, 11:03:41 AM »
Apologies for the unexpected downtime around the 25th/26th September, this was caused by a host failure at 2am UK time, which was finally "sort of" resolved at 4am; but I needed to reboot our VPS again, as it always needs a reboot following any kind of disruption...

I've decided to go on the hunt for a new host anyway, since the platform we're on has proven to be less reliable than I might have hoped. I'm also going to look into upgrading the forum software to SMF v2, which has many new and useful features, not least better security.

There's no timetable on this work, I'm mad busy both at work & leisure at the moment, so I'll fit it in as best I can...
Cheers!
Ade.
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1x Lister CS Start-o-Matic (complete, runs)
0x Lister JP4 :( - Sold to go in a canal boat.

dieselgman

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Re: DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2014, 12:53:23 PM »
Thanks for your efforts Ade!

dieselgman
ALL Things Lister/Petter - Americas
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westcoaster

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Re: DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2014, 03:04:04 AM »
Downtime? What downtime?

Anyone else notice the downtime?


In as much as it is nice to provide "five nines" reliability, I don't think it is really necessary for something like the lister engine forum...

Perhaps if you were providing telephone service for a hospital you may be on to something.

two hours, I don't think anyone noticed...


Post a poll.
What is a reasonable outage time?

For me it would be 24 hours...

AdeV

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Re: DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2014, 01:19:41 PM »
For historical reasons, the LEF is a bit sensitive to downtime - it used to vanish for anything from hours to weeks at a time. Indeed, it was wrestled (pretty literally) from its founder at some considerable effort & cost because a few of us wanted to move it to a reliable host, and to try to rebuild the trust that was lost in the "bad old days".

Unfortunately, the host we've moved it to - whilst immeasurably better than the predecessor, still has a less than stellar reputation when it comes to up time. Plus, the linux distro it runs on is getting old, it went out of support last year so there's no new patches (e.g. for a couple of serious vulnerabilities which have shown up in the last few months)... And for some reason, this particular virtual machine seems prone to crashing unexpectedly, all by itself, requiring a reboot. It is, by some margin, the least reliable Linux VM I have ever encountered...

Unfortunately, despite "rescuing" the forum from certain oblivion, we have lost many fine contributors from the early days, probably as a result of the unreliability. Once a reputation is formed, it's difficult to repair it, especially if the damn thing continues to fall over on an all-too-regular basis...

Anyway, it's not all philanthropy on my part - I use the same VM to host my e-mail & forum photos, so I want a more reliable platform as well! I've found a couple of possibilities, one US based and one UK based, both are similarly priced to my current provider, I just need to try to find out which ones seem to have the better reliability & up-time...

Cheers!
Ade.

Cheers!
Ade.
--------------
1x Lister CS Start-o-Matic (complete, runs)
0x Lister JP4 :( - Sold to go in a canal boat.

t19

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Re: DOWNTIME - 25th/26th Sept 2014
« Reply #4 on: September 27, 2014, 01:51:03 PM »
I use Hosting4Less in the USA for my Tanknet site

Lots of users and traffic, no issues with downtime
There is plenty of room for all of Gods creatures... right next to the mashed potatoes...