<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sendero @ May 5, 2006, 6:22 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>
Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone. TMS only lost two weeks of information due to corruption from the RAID controller and adjacent "near-line" backup system. All original information from Day One, Topic One, Post One (link) on January 29th, 2004 to a date in late April is still here! If you are missing something in searches or browsing the forums, you may have your "show posts from" field set to low. (It's down in the bottom right hand corner of a subforum)

For reference, TMS is backed up to a "near-line" disk system (full backup then incrementals) and then committed to tape via a synthetic consolidation of backups. The tape backup system did its job after the failure because the corruption committed to the RAID array was also committed to the "near-line" backup system.

We appreciate the concern and always welcome suggestions. If we decide we know it all, that's a signal for when it's time to checkout!

-Nathan
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Well, you have my apologies then. Like I said it could have been something I was doing wrong, which was the case. Thank you! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/thumb.gif[/img]

Cool that you are using disk staging too! Thanks for responding.

 

I suffer with all of you when TMS goes down. These are by far my favorite Mustang forums, so I feel lost when I can't read and post.

The bottom line is that we wouldn't do business with WHD if we didn't feel that they were absolutely best option for us. We have been extremely pleased with their service, support and price and have no plans to investigate other hosting companies.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sendero @ May 5, 2006, 5:22 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>
Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone. TMS only lost two weeks of information due to corruption from the RAID controller and adjacent "near-line" backup system. All original information from Day One, Topic One, Post One (link) on January 29th, 2004 to a date in late April is still here! If you are missing something in searches or browsing the forums, you may have your "show posts from" field set to low. (It's down in the bottom right hand corner of a subforum)

For reference, TMS is backed up to a "near-line" disk system (full backup then incrementals) and then committed to tape via a synthetic consolidation of backups. The tape backup system did its job after the failure because the corruption committed to the RAID array was also committed to the "near-line" backup system.

We appreciate the concern and always welcome suggestions. If we decide we know it all, that's a signal for when it's time to checkout!

-Nathan
[/b][/quote]
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/headscratch.gif[/img] I wish I understood computer lingo [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/banghead.gif[/img]

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Boltzman @ May 5, 2006, 10:02 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/headscratch.gif[/img] I wish I understood computer lingo [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/banghead.gif[/img]
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Let me try to translate... [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrinjester.gif[/img]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'>
Whoa whoa whoa, hold the phone. TMS only lost a few miles per gallon because of water in the main gas tank and reserve tank. All original un-tainted gas from Day One, Topic One, Post One (link) on January 29th, 2004 to a date in late April is still available in the second reserve tank! If you are missing miles per gallon, you may have to switch your tank selector (found inside the cockpit).

For reference, TMS has two reserve tanks to increase its range. The first tank keeps a couple of gallons in case we run the main tank to low, but the second reserve tank always has enough gas on hand to completely replinish the main tank to full capacity at any given time.

We appreciate the concern and always welcome suggestions. If we decide we know it all, that's a signal for when it's time to checkout!

-Nathan
[/b][/quote]

Hope this helps.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sendero @ May 6, 2006, 2:24 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>
Let me try to translate... [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrinjester.gif[/img]
Hope this helps.
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[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/lol.gif[/img]
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rollinglaugh.gif[/img]
[img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/rofl2.gif[/img]

 

A good backup/recovery and data management product will eliminate or minimize data loss. Weren't there several posts lost because of no current good backups of the data? I would suggest you consider CommVault Galaxy as a enterprise class product that could help your company with this issue. www.CommVault.com


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sendero @ May 5, 2006, 3:56 PM) Quoted post</div><div class='quotemain'>
While I'm not really sure where the "****-poor" comment applies, I'll try to address your questions since I am part of the "hosting company" for TMS. To begin with, I want you to keep in mind that Brad does this on an individual level, not as a corporate conglomerate that normally backs a site of this size.

We, WebHostDigital.com, strive to provide the best solutions possible for Brad and TMS without absolutely breaking the bank. Sure, we could sale him a nice redundant web cluster with all the frills, but that would quickly force the TMS business model in a direction that neither WebHostDigital nor Brad wants (pop-up ad's anyone?). With that said, we play a delicate balancing game of hardware versus traffic based on our best "guesstimations" as to how people will react to new models and features. The biggest downtime issues (that are not related to regular maintenance and upgrades) always happened after a major release of said models (S197) and new media/features. It's difficult to effectively plan for quadrupled traffic in a six hour span and be cost conscious. The last string of issues started with a traffic overload (RSS Feeds) and just by bad luck ended in a RAID controller failure (the data loss). If you look at the overall picture from the beginnings, TMS and its Forums have doubled every nine months in traffic and in size which has been a learning experience for both Brad and I. Nobody, in their sane mind, ever thought this site could/would experience such explosive growth. We liken it to riding a bottle rocket with the stick broke off, you're going to go somewhere fast, you just don't know where!

To cut it short, we are very aware of the frustrations that TMS users go through. All of us at WebHostDigital and TMS have a personal stake* in the success and continuity of this community because as you've said it's one of the best places on the internet for all things Mustang (and maybe even Ford). Recognizing this "need" we have made a couple of decisions that will ensure better reliability and increased load capabilities. One is the decision to change software to vBulletin. We feel vB is better suited to handle the size and complexity of TMS and have been in close contact with vB's technical services that assures us of this fact. Invision has served us well, but we've found its limitation. Another more notable change is the move to faster hardware in terms of an Enterprise-grade web server. The last one failed in a most undesirable fashion (the data loss) which has prompted us to change hardware providers post haste for not only TMS, but our entire customer base. As you are probably well aware your average purpose built web server is not designed to act like a database backend, but we are now elevating the hardware of this site into the Enterprise level which brings all of that architecture into play. The only unknown factor in this equation is the human aspect. It will still present a hurdle in trying to predict what traffic will be like in X amount of time. Normally, TMS receives a hardware upgrade and does fine with load levels for 5-9 months, now we are going to set a lower acceptable traffics limit and try to avoid load based

outages by being proactive instead of reactive to demand.

All of us understand and greatly appreciate everyone's patience in this time of growth. I applaud Brad for the hard work he has done in bringing credible and accurate information to the web (we all know how valuable that can be). I also bow to the Forums Staff for providing a safe haven of information and family enjoyable environment to be a part of. As long as the users of TMS have a need, we will continue striving to fill it. We may be a little banged up now, but don't count us out of the fight yet. I hope I have answered your (and others) questions/concerns fully. If there are anymore, I can address them as needed.

Here's to a bigger and better TMS. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/beer.gif[/img]

-Nathan

* from above: I, along with Nic, are long time Mustang owners. We've actually all come from the same car crowd (except for Nic) and keep in contact on a personal level. Brad and Scott have strict instructions to contact us, no matter when it is, in the event of problems with TMS.
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