Reef Central Database Destroyed

[Gardiner]

If you click on the "Forum Jump" link on RC you can see a listing of the main forum threads. That listing is created by scanning the database. Having that link displaying would lead me to believe they have a full working database.

 

[RayD]

Just put on the site now ...

I hope they come back better than ever!

Hello RC Members.

Sorry for the interruption. We'll be back in a little while, I need to check something.

To the folks spreading rumors and making up quotes, it's pretty sad when you have to resort to lying to try and get members.
Slander and libel are pretty serious things.
Cheers

 

[daveb]

Updates from RB's.


Skipper
Posted July 16, 2009 at 10:19 am | Permalink
Folks, all of this “news item” is totally off base. This is all false speculation/propaganda, obviously being perpetrated by someone with an agenda against RC. These so called quotes from beerguy and mhurley are totally concocted.

Total B/S!!!

and

beerguy
Posted July 16, 2009 at 10:22 am | Permalink
Slander and libel are pretty serious.

Are you game?

.....

Looks like it may not be lost.

 

[RayD]

Some people just love to see a "giant" fall. It's just the way human nature is.

I read this quote some years ago and it is so true with some people.

"There's nothing more delicious than the failure of a friend."

I'm glad I'm not like that!!

 

[UncleJT]

Reef Central is not dead after all, everything was fabricated:

http://www.reefbuilders.com/2009/07/16/reef-central-dead-afterall/

 

[JayM]

Out of morbid curiosity, is disaster recovery tested periodically? Is there a copy stored offsite? I'm not an expert but was just curious to see if this is done for a site like this. Also, I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night, so let me know if you want "advice."

For a 100% volunteer forum, we're probably a little better than average.

There are local backups done for convenience manually by site admins, but the primary backups are done over the wire on a separate physical device with hourly incremental snapshots.

Quarterly, (or as necessary) individual files restores are checked. Annually, the VM is stood up. We don't do the VM more than 1x a year, because it requires that the server the site runs on be DOWN at the time....

Offsite copies of the server image, updated daily, are offsited at 2 geographically distributed NOC's...one East Coast, one West Coast.

I for one am glad that this RC outage is a minor one, and as someone who works in the industry, that is a REALLY crappy, a-hole type rumor to spread. I hope the malicious scumbags who started that rumor get their karmic comeuppance

 

[Leroy]

Sad to read that pranksters and rumors are having their jollies bringing down a a giant such as RC to their knees and shaking up the reefing community. I depend on RC as many others do for the added information and other services offered in the hobby. It would be a big void for all if RC was not able to be back online.

 

[~Flighty~]

We were doing completely offsite redudndant nightly backups of BRS When Eliot and I were doing that part of the admin. We've handeed off security and backup to others, and I'm not sure what procedure is being done now, but I'm sure we are covering the bases. But I agree with others that I would be shocked if a huge (and financially very valuable) site like RC was not very protected. Big FAIL.

EDIT: Jay gave thecorrect BRS info while I was typing.

 

[JayM]

looks like our fears were unjustified.

I still think they should only have links in their DB to a repository, as opposed to embedded objects bloating their tables. Hopefully they're heading in that direction.

 

[uwaeve]

There are local backups done for convenience manually by site admins, but the primary backups are done over the wire on a separate physical device with hourly incremental snapshots.

Quarterly, (or as necessary) individual files restores are checked. Annually, the VM is stood up. We don't do the VM more than 1x a year, because it requires that the server the site runs on be DOWN at the time....

Offsite copies of the server image, updated daily, are offsited at 2 geographically distributed NOC's...one East Coast, one West Coast.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out just to satisfy my curiosity. And to ~Flighty~ as well...I would expect no less from Eliot (I work with him and he helps me wage my personal IT battle)

 

[Jocko]

Haha love the "Unlike most sites, our database is very large..." Classic.

 

[RayD]

It's back. That wasn't as bad as it could have been.

I'm glad!

 

[delta]

Things got a little blown out of proportion there

One of the benefits of the BRS server move was to improve our backup system as well as relieve some of the
load on the club volunteers.

 

[ceige]

hey at least RC is faster now

 

[Matt L.]

Well, I'm relieved it is back, but a little unnerved by this whole incident.

Matt

 

[paulthomas]

Sorry for the interruption. We'll be back in a little while, I need to check something.

I like that. It sounds like he's going out for coffee and donuts. It's great to hear that the rumors were unfounded and that RC will be back. The first thing I was alarmed about was all of that paid member info. I'm one of them. :: But then I remembered that like here, they use Paypal for that.

 

[JayM]

it looks as though the RC site might have gone through a conversion of an old flavor of VBulletin (paid-for forum software) to vbportal (open source)

I can see where that might have taken a day or so to do.....

 

[paulthomas]

RC is back. I just got a notification and the link worked just fine.

 

[paulthomas]

Whoa! It's super fast too. Well, super RC fast...

 

[Joel A]

Sorry for the interruption. We'll be back in a little while, I need to check something.

I like that. It sounds like he's going out for coffee and donuts. It's great to hear that the rumors were unfounded and that RC will be back. The first thing I was alarmed about was all of that paid member info. I'm one of them. :: But then I remembered that like here, they use Paypal for that.

do you think it's worth it to be a paid member over there? What are the perks?

I go over there a lot, but not as much as i am here...