We're back. Sorry, folks...my bad.
What was intended to me a minor update yesterday, quickly turned into severe ugliness. A patch applied to the server required a reboot, which normally takes a minute or so.
The server failed to come back up...which is an absolute PITA to deal with remotely, as I'm not sitting in front of the computer to see what is going on. My only recourse, was to deal with two levels of tech support, playing a long and frustrating "game" of telephone.
Support is by email only, and to make matters worse, my support contact doesn't do the troubleshooting in front of the computer. Instead, it went something like this:
Me: "Please try this."
Wait 5 minutes to 2 hours...
Support: "I'll forward that to the data center techs."
Wait 10-30 minutes...
Support: "Didn't work. Should we rebuild the server?"
Me: "Hell no! Try this."
Repeat the above for about 24 hours...
Anyway, everything appears to be functioning again, and lessons were learned from this experience. In particular, I put together documentation for the hosting provider, that allows them to bring the server up via a CD when the server won't boot on its own. In this "rescue mode", the server doesn't function normally - but it does allow me to get onto it remotely, and fix things directly without the game of telephone mentioned above...
Welcome back, friends...
What was intended to me a minor update yesterday, quickly turned into severe ugliness. A patch applied to the server required a reboot, which normally takes a minute or so.
The server failed to come back up...which is an absolute PITA to deal with remotely, as I'm not sitting in front of the computer to see what is going on. My only recourse, was to deal with two levels of tech support, playing a long and frustrating "game" of telephone.
Support is by email only, and to make matters worse, my support contact doesn't do the troubleshooting in front of the computer. Instead, it went something like this:
Me: "Please try this."
Wait 5 minutes to 2 hours...
Support: "I'll forward that to the data center techs."
Wait 10-30 minutes...
Support: "Didn't work. Should we rebuild the server?"
Me: "Hell no! Try this."
Repeat the above for about 24 hours...
Anyway, everything appears to be functioning again, and lessons were learned from this experience. In particular, I put together documentation for the hosting provider, that allows them to bring the server up via a CD when the server won't boot on its own. In this "rescue mode", the server doesn't function normally - but it does allow me to get onto it remotely, and fix things directly without the game of telephone mentioned above...
Welcome back, friends...