Knocked out by gas

[Paul]

Sorry for the down time since Saturday. Hoppy, the server was a little unwell due to an accident at Westhost, the company which owns the datacenter where hoppy lives. Apparently a fire test was being done, which accidentaly set off the release of a fire suppressant gas called Inergen. Seems it caused huge problems with a lot of servers being put out of action, and many still not back up and running at the moment. Oooops!

Hoppy seems totally stable again now as far as I can tell and there doesn't seem to have been any loss of data, or any posts as far as I know.

There's more info about the situation at http://forums.westhost.com/forumdisplay.php?f=144 .

[Ms. Elsewhere]

oh wow! Thanks for letting us know! How insane is that? Out of curiousity, are most things stored elsewhere so we can recover them? Eg. The Archives?

[Paul]

When I originally signed up for hoppy, I took the option of nightly backups from Westhost. I asked in their forum a couple of days ago, when hoppy was out of action, whether the backups were stored in a different location but didn't get an answer on that one though. I'm guessing (hoping) they probably are, as I haven't read any messages on their forum yet about anyone losing data.

I also do backups to my own computer on a regular basis of the entire forum database and the site, to ensure that even if Westhost somehow loses everything, there's always a reasonably recent copy of the forum that can be restored. The most recent copy I have currently on my computer is 19th January for example. Actually, that gives me an idea - I can try setting a reminder for me to backup on a regular basis rather than just do it when I get the thought.

[DucksRMagical]

Wow, that's not good! Glad the forums are back up now! I had some stuff I needed to post in the fiction sections.

[Scellanis]

Eek! Well I think that proves that their current fire alarm plan does not work anyway.

[Paul]

Indeed, I hope they'll re-look at how they do some things in emergency situations. I read on their forum that the nightly backups they do are actually kept in the same location rather than elsewhere which scared me a bit, but apparently many server companies do the same thing due the cost of offsite backups. Still, as long as I keep backing up things myself regularly as well, even if total disaster does happen at the server center, we'll be OK...so you can keep posting those great fanfics Duckie and everyone (probably best to keep your own backups of your own stories too though, on wordpad or something, just in case disaster does happen and I ever have to restore the forum from a few weeks back, depending on my own last backup).

[Petronella_Pettigrew]

You know, when I read the thread title I thought it would contain some anecdote about fartin'

[GodrictheGriffon]

Hahaha! Well I'm glad that it's about Hoppy because when I first read it I thought it would be about Paul being knocked out. So I'm very glad your okay.