Valoria Boards - AoW, Natures Eye Alliance

[Lafala Arifel]

You may have noticed that the forums have been down since the early afternoon.

Netweaver (the host of Valoria Roleplaying Boards and the Artisans of Willow website) sent this email out today:

> [This is important and not a circular]
>
> Dear Customer,
>
> As you may be aware there has been a problem today
> with access to your databases held on the MySQL
> server 'mysql.netweaver.net'.
>
> This email explains what happened to cause the problem
> and what we are doing to rectify it.
>
> Early this afternoon one of our remote power switches
> (a device that allows us to remotely cycle the power on
> a machine if it crashed) failed for an unknown reason,
> and reset itself to factory default settings.
>
> This, regrettably, caused all the machines it was
> supplying power for to become turned off.
>
> Of the 8 servers on this switch, 7 came straight back
> up when we saw the problem and fixed it. This will have
> caused a period of about 30 minutes downtime on some hosting
> servers. (E-mail is hosted on a machine connected to a different
> power switch, so like some other services, was
> unaffected)
>
> Unfortunately the server which did not come back up is
> 'brandy.netweaver.net' which hosts most databases and
> our own secure ordering system.
>
> An onsite engineer was then asked to check over the
> server to find out why it was not rebooting; unfortunately
> because the machine was shutdown (effectively) in such an
> 'unclean' fashion the filesystems on the machine have
> become corrupted. (Many of you will know the ScanDisk
> routine in Windows if your system crashes).
>
> Unfortunately the onsite engineer was unable to sucesfully
> run the required commands to repair the filesystem, as
> they themselves were inaccessible, so at this time the
> MySQL server still remains offline.
>
> Although we are working on ways of getting the system
> to a repair specialist, we would kindly ask that you remain
> patient. We cannot say at this time whether the data
> on the disks will be retrievable as we do not know
> how much damage was done when the system failed, or
> indeed if the powerswitch caused a spike to the system.
>
> The backup strategy for the MySQL server was RAID based
> due to the fact that the information stored on it was
> constantly changing. Again, at this time we do not
> know how intact the RAID array is, and hence do not know
> if some databases will be completely lost.
>
> Most customers will have kept SQL dumps of their databases,
> although we appreciate these will very often be slightly
> out of date. (The same reason we don't do dump backups
> of the MySQL server, and use RAID instead).
>
> We have configured one of our spare servers to take over
> from brandy.netweaver.net to host the MySQL server. It
> is a Pentium-III 1Ghz with 1Gb of RAM (which makes it
> more powerful that the previous MySQL server). And is
> currently 'ready to use'.
>
> Our programmers have this evening configured the latest
> version of the MySQL server on it, and have setup user
> accounts on it. Also, they have created blank copies of
> all the databases which were held on the old server.
>
> This means, if you had kept a backup that you can login
> to the phpMyAdmin utility and re-upload the data to
> start your databases working again. (Details of the
> username and password are below, should you have
> changed them - just for clarification)
>
> If you did not have a backup of your database then
> you will need to either start from new, or wait to see
> if we can recover the data from the old server. Access
> to the dtaabases can be gained from phpMyAdmin. (Again
> on the details below).
>
> Although we realise how frustrating this is, and indeed
> annoying it is, we must take this opportunity to remind you
> that this problem could not have been predicted and
> was not caused by human error, rather, the physical
> breakdown of the power switch. Our terms and conditions
> do explicity state that we do not keep off-site backups
> and indeed, for SQL data, this would be a near impossible
> task anyway.
>
> We will update you, of course, with any information on
> the progress of data recovery.
>
> Our support desk will assist with any problems connecting
> to the new mysql server. At this time the control panel
> (WebCentre) cannot access this machine to add/remove
> or reset passwords on databases. Our programmers will
> address this issue when more is known on the status of
> the older machine. phpMyAdmin access from the WebCentre
> will work.
>
> To recap:
>
> We have setup a new MySQL server which has been
> configured with your username and database names.
>
> All the databases are 'blank' and ready to have SQL
> dump data re-uploaded into them, if you have a
> backup.
>
> We are currently working on trying to get the database
> information off the old server so that we can
> restore it onto the new one.

Basically, it doesn't look good and it seems there is a good chance of permanent data loss

This will effect the Artisans of Willow guild website and any forums at www.valoria.org/camelot

I will keep people posted of any updates regarding the SQL server situation.

uke:

 

[Merecraft]

Everything is back up and running, though a little slowly. Looks like they got lucky and managed to recover the data.