gator4 hard drive failure 12/26/03

[sonic]

Originally Posted by Gator_Support

Our newer servers have instant backups. (raid1)

If your a reseller joined in the last month you have that.

That's wonderful, thanks!

[izzy]

Originally Posted by izzy

re: acceptable-gains.net

multiple identities, filters and options are all missing (set to defaults)

these had not changed in months and should have been restored

- iz

we also lost our webmail address books, completely. Why was all this not backed up at all?

How can we get moved over to the new servers that have "instant backup"?

- iz

[GatorBrent]

Backups are always shady...
They aren't perfect and they only backs up accounts not system files on the server, nor does it backup all cpanel files. It can't.

Webmail shouldn't be used to store emails it's main purpose is for travel use and when away from home. Outlook express should always be used for every day regular use, and storing addresses and so on....

Even with the RAID1 that is not a perfect solution. It's a mirror so if say a hacker deletes everything in 1 drive it's all deleted instantly on the other drive. Theres a 100 other things that can go wrong on these as well. Hard drive failures are some what rare but they do happen. We have 30 servers. We've been in business about a year and a half. So for one server to have a hard drive failure out of 30 in that amount of time it's more of just bad luck then something that's going to be happening all the time.

[ooshna]

i am having a problem since my site has been up for some reason my poll isn't working its kind of annoying if there are any suggestions i would be thankful

[izzy]

Originally Posted by Gator_Support

Backups are always shady...
They aren't perfect and they only backs up accounts not system files on the server, nor does it backup all cpanel files. It can't.

Webmail shouldn't be used to store emails it's main purpose is for travel use and when away from home. Outlook express should always be used for every day regular use, and storing addresses and so on....

Even with the RAID1 that is not a perfect solution. It's a mirror so if say a hacker deletes everything in 1 drive it's all deleted instantly on the other drive. Theres a 100 other things that can go wrong on these as well. Hard drive failures are some what rare but they do happen. We have 30 servers. We've been in business about a year and a half. So for one server to have a hard drive failure out of 30 in that amount of time it's more of just bad luck then something that's going to be happening all the time.

the financial services companys I work with backup data reliably without the limitations you mention. Granted they have larger budgets and would not be able to offer that level of availabilty at $49/mo or less.

as far as you comment about webmail, that is an opinion. We use webmail exclusively because we always travel, and need access to all historical emails from any location, even from locations where we must use a companys own equipment behind firewalls and do not have a choice of mail client or browser.

one should not rely on mirrored disks (RAID 1) alone, but use it in conjunction with nightly backups (weekly full, and nightly incremental or differential). Full backups should be just that, all system areas included. Incrementals if properly configured would automatically all changed files, and conserve both time and media space while insuring that even configuration files were backed up.

be that as it may, I do not have an issue with the service given the extremely reasonable price (hostgator is the best deal I have found anywhere), I just would have liked to have known what volatile data was not being backed up, and how infrequently that which is being backed up actually is.

without shell access (which I understand is a security decision hostgator makes), it is not straightforward for me to perform my own archiving and 'push' to another server. I will see how I can work within the limitations tp insure that I do not lose so much in the future.

I am fortunate that my use of hostgator is still in a pilot capacity, and none of my customers had to suffer loss, which would damaged my credibility as a business.

but everything involves tradeoffs, and I will continue to use and to recommend that others use hostgator because of its price and package. I will just need to devise some workarounds for a backup strategy which does not meet my (or my customers) needs.

best regards,

- iz

[GatorBrent]

Try deleting the poll / making new one.

Izzy you are right there are many better ways to backup files, the best probably being tape. Problem is we aren't like most of the competition packing thousands of sites per server. Our average server has about 170 sites on it. Implementing something of that nature would be the difference between making money and filing bankruptcy.
Even those who pack their servers with thousands usually fail to have any backup system at all. We do the best we can, and that's still going to be far from perfection.

Thanks for understanding.

[izzy]

re: acceptable-gains.net

the mail forwarders associated with my second ("add-on") domain acceptable-gains.com were all lost

I had to rebuild them from scratch

fyi to the group

- iz

[fragileglass]

The list serve that I had set up with my website is no longer working, do I need to go back in and reset it?


Thanks,
Shawn

[itz2000]

I had the second package before the error, now I have the first package please fix it...!!!

[cwrebel]

Not sure if this is due to the harddrive crash or not but I am having an email problem that I cannot figure out. My main account is ok but the other one that I have is not working. Unfortunately, this is the email account that I use for my business. I cannot access it with either Outlook or webmail, yet I can access my other accounts. Outlook keeps asking me for a password and I type it in and it will not take. It keeps telling me that it is unable to log on to incoming server. I even deleted the account and set it up again but no luck. What can I do to get this corrected?

Regards,
Ed

[cwrebel]

Once again I went in and tried to change passwords, reinitiate the email account and I still get nowhere. Never had this problem. Below is the error msg:


Task 'mail.wsdesigns.net - Sending and Receiving' reported error (0x8004210A) : 'The operation timed out waiting for a response from the receiving (POP) server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP).'


Ed

[GatorBrent]

You aren't on the server that had the crash only gator4.hostgator.com with the ip 216.67.235.177 are affected. Email us your problem if you still haven't figured it out please.

KLite.co.il fixing now.

[izzy]

re: acceptable-gains.net

the horde webmail address books were all lost

since the restore the following message is displayed when we try to add the entries from scratch

There was an error adding this object. Contact your system administrator
for further help.

- iz