2004-03-28 mail2.hsphere.cc

Looks like mail2 crashed hard with a possible master HD failure. The machine is being brought in for repair or replacement.

No mail data is expected to be lost.

[jjay]

bummer alex but hey it happens... what is the expected down-time worst case scenario? Just so I know what to tell my customers.

Alex is on his way in here, so we'll try to get an ETA to you in the next 30 minutes, just as soon as he makes a concrete assessment.

[nhdonny]

Thanks for the heads up.

Mmmmmmmmm, that's why I hate to give ETA's, it's been over 30 minutes already. Alex should be walking, no running in, at any moment.

Alex is here, will get you guys an update shortly.

Installing mail system on spare HD. Looks like all critical system data have been successfully salvaged from the dead drive. User mail is stored on a separate drive, which is fine.

We're still looking at another hour plus.

[nhdonny]

Would now be a good time to ask why Vortech doesn't use Raid?

I'm just wondering and want to say up front, I Love Vortech!!

Is hsphere not compatible or something else that is out of your control?

When I was with a host a few years back we hot swapped drives more than once with no loss of data and no down time.

[jjay]

Originally Posted by nhdonny

Would now be a good time to ask why Vortech doesn't use Raid?

My guess is it's probably money, keep in mind Raid costs a lot more than standard hard drive and I must say, in my own personal expirence I've seen a raid go bad as well. A Raid array just offers more protection but there is never any 100% safe hard drive. I've been a Vortech customer for a year now and have had great service as well. Maybe a Raid for the mail servers isn't a bad idea but if it came down to cost I wouldn't want to pay any more than I am for servers to just have Raid, I think this is the only time I remember a Mail server going down because of a complete hard drive failure.

[nhdonny]

Originally Posted by jjay

My guess is it's probably money, keep in mind Raid costs a lot more than standard hard drive and I must say, in my own personal expirence I've seen a raid go bad as well. A Raid array just offers more protection but there is never any 100% safe hard drive. I've been a Vortech customer for a year now and have had great service as well. Maybe a Raid for the mail servers isn't a bad idea but if it came down to cost I wouldn't want to pay any more than I am for servers to just have Raid, I think this is the only time I remember a Mail server going down because of a complete hard drive failure.

I basically agree but it seems like there have been one or two other drive issues since I came here last year. I'm also sure that most of us keep timely backups of all our websites making disaster recovery doable, even if painful, but we're SOL when it comes to email.

Heading downtown with the new system drive.

[Silverbug]

what was the story on raid Alex?

RAID is a cost issue and therefore belongs in the realm of management, not system administration.

Mail2 is all green on the monitor. If there are any residual issues we'll take care of them.

[admin]

jjay and Silverbug, raid is nice don't get me wrong I love raid and use it when the cost is right. Because we are in the lower end of the market with this cluster it would really cut in to other things such as techs, support and such.

A server that cost around $1200 to $1400 would jump to well over $2300 to $2500 each. Being that we add 5 or more systems every 2 weeks to a month that adds up very fast as you can see.

So our take on it is keep the cost low for us and you, make sure you have a really good backup system. We have 2.6 TB of backup for the systems now and may be adding anther 1 to 2 TB soon as well to keep up with the amount of systems. This means we keep your cost down, our cost down. Bad side is if a drive fails the system fails till its reinstalled and put right back on line. Good news is we use the best drives we can find for our system and data drives with the best cooling to make them last there life time AVG 5 years. So if we just just go off hardware failing we should only see a that system fail once ever 5 years, not too bad really if you think about it.

[jjay]

I understand Admin, keeping the costs low for us is good! One of the many good things about Vortech. The techs do a great job and even with a hard drive failure you get it right back up! I was only suggesting a Raid but point well taken and I completely understand.

With everything working now we must say to ourselves.
How cool is it that it was a Sunday