Wednesday, February 15th was a perfectly normal day, until around 9:30 AM or so, Arizona time, when our domain monitor service warned me by email that our sites were down.
Sure enough, I checked, and even the server was offline. As is usual in such circumstances, I restarted it in the host's cloud control panel — and waited — and waited.
Normally a reboot takes just a few minutes to complete, similar to a Mac or a PC. Remember a server is basically a souped up PC.
I called the host, IONOS, and had them check. They took the matter to one of their datacenters — where our server is situated — to figure out what was going on, since it would only boot into the box's firmware or BIOS.
Later that day, I was restoring my files on a new server — the old one was down for the count. It took close to 18 hours from the original failure to get back up. We have lots of files, many hundreds of them for my radio shows and other files.
This sort of thing can happen to anyone. Cloud servers are asked to run 24/7 and never fail, but sometimes they do. Now if you've spread your stuff across hundreds or thousands of servers as large companies do, it takes an awful lot to bring it down. But it does happen.
With one server running our sites, I make daily backups, sometimes I do it twice a day. It goes to different backup facilities for the best possible protection. Even if you have a small, personal site, make sure a backup is available. Most hosts offer some sort of backup protection, but sometimes you may have to pay extra for it. Cloud backup services such as Backblaze — and even a Microsoft One Drive — can store such backups and they're not expensive.
For the iMac in my home office area, I keep three backups of my stuff. Two are in my home, using external drives. The offsite one is Backblaze, which caters to both personal and business use. So if my home were to vanish tomorrow, I would still be able to get online with a replacement computer. Yes, as you see, I am an enthusiastic preacher or evangelist of the backup religion.
Sure enough, I checked, and even the server was offline. As is usual in such circumstances, I restarted it in the host's cloud control panel — and waited — and waited.
Normally a reboot takes just a few minutes to complete, similar to a Mac or a PC. Remember a server is basically a souped up PC.
I called the host, IONOS, and had them check. They took the matter to one of their datacenters — where our server is situated — to figure out what was going on, since it would only boot into the box's firmware or BIOS.
Later that day, I was restoring my files on a new server — the old one was down for the count. It took close to 18 hours from the original failure to get back up. We have lots of files, many hundreds of them for my radio shows and other files.
This sort of thing can happen to anyone. Cloud servers are asked to run 24/7 and never fail, but sometimes they do. Now if you've spread your stuff across hundreds or thousands of servers as large companies do, it takes an awful lot to bring it down. But it does happen.
With one server running our sites, I make daily backups, sometimes I do it twice a day. It goes to different backup facilities for the best possible protection. Even if you have a small, personal site, make sure a backup is available. Most hosts offer some sort of backup protection, but sometimes you may have to pay extra for it. Cloud backup services such as Backblaze — and even a Microsoft One Drive — can store such backups and they're not expensive.
For the iMac in my home office area, I keep three backups of my stuff. Two are in my home, using external drives. The offsite one is Backblaze, which caters to both personal and business use. So if my home were to vanish tomorrow, I would still be able to get online with a replacement computer. Yes, as you see, I am an enthusiastic preacher or evangelist of the backup religion.
