We lost one of the hard drives in our database server yesterday (Sunday) morning so I've been working on restoring it. Fortunately the drive crashed around 6am, and I have an automated backup that runs at 1am every morning, so we didn't lose much data... but if you've ever had to repair a Windows Server installation, it's not fun.
So... I'm posting this just to let you know that everything on the web site works EXCEPT you won't be able to log into your account until the database server is back up and running. This means you won't be able to download courses using the Video Player "My Account" button, or log into the Online Theater.
You CAN still download courses if you have the original emails that our database sends you when you first place your order. That email contains big, long web links that allow you to manually download your courses. If you click on those, you can still download - but you'll have to manually enter your passwords (same email).
The rest of the web site is still fully functional. Fortunately that's on a different server. You CAN still place orders (hint hint) and browse the rest of the site.
In the future, I'm going to build a backup database that resides on the primary server that caches all the user data, so in case this happens again (or we lose Internet connection here in the office - which happens often), it won't prevent user login.
OK, just wanted to keep you updated. I'm performing the final restore of my Windows Server backups right now. After that finishes, I need to restore the newest incremental backups. Hopefully the server will be back up in a couple of hours.
Update: The server OS is back up and running. I just restored the last full backup (drive image) of the server. Now I just need to restore the last incremental backup. For those of you who don't know much about file backups, what you should do is make a FULL backup of your hard drive at least once a month or so, and then every night run an INCREMENTAL backup which copies only the changed files (doesn't take as long).
My last FULL backup was at the end of August, so I just finished restoring that. The server is now at the state it was in back on 8/29/09. This is good enough to restore the OS, any apps, and such. Now I just need to restore the last incremental backup which will put all of the database files, documents, and that stuff back online.
Fun wow.
Update: OK, we're back up and running. Everything is fine now. The database has been restored. The only thing we lost were some customer service emails. So, if you sent me a customer service inquiry (yes, via the Web form too) on 9/27 between 1am and 6am Eastern, you should log on to your account and see if it's in there. If not, resend it.
17 years ago
