Results 1 to 6 of 6
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2011
    Location
    Cybertron
    Posts
    10,484

    Data Center Fires, Concerns?

    Not sure which place to post this, as this does affect everyone...but is anyone concerned about the recent news of another Data Center fire...especially after a large one less than a month ago?

    I don't recall of any news of another one for a number of years, or I may not have noticed it.

    Backups!!! Backups!!! Backups!!! Backups!!! Always have off-site backup in place.
    ██ WPCYCLE MANAGED WORDPRESS WEB HOSTING ██
    Managed WordPress VPS & Managed WordPress Dedicated VPS Servers
    Optimized • NVMe • SSD • KVM • NGINX • WordPress Brute Force Protection • Daily Offsite Backups
    Email: sales@wpcycle.comFacebook: wpcycle • Twitter: wpcycle

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    1,789
    As someone affected by the recent fires, I agree, off-site backups are the key.

    Now, restoring from those backups onto another server is a MAJOR PITA, but it beats sweating as to whether or not if or when your server will come back up.

    The other key - and this applies to end-users - keep your account as small as possible, at least for our restoration purposes it's going to greatly increase the speed in which your account is restored from those backups.

    During the recent disaster event - 95% of the accounts were less than 10GB in total size. The other 5% had some absolutely HUGE accounts. A couple in excess of 100GB. Those large accounts are going to get restored last. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but that's just the way our system operates. Maybe somebody else's system is different.

    It just makes sense for us. We use a worker script to perform these restores. An account at 100GB may take any where from 6 to 12 hours to transfer from the off-site backup server. That's 6 to 12 hours that that worker script can't dedicate to restoring one of those 95% accounts that's less than 10GB. Numbers wise, we can restore a lot of smaller accounts in that 6 to 12 hour window rather than clog up that worker for a 100GB account.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    /etc/my.cnf
    Posts
    10,657
    Actually making sure the back-ups your taking are valid is a good measure too.
    UK Based Proactive Server Management.
    Zabbix Enterprise 24/7 Monitoring.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
    Location
    World Wide Web
    Posts
    2,347
    Quote Originally Posted by WPCYCLE View Post
    Backups!!! Backups!!! Backups!!! Backups!!! Always have off-site backup in place.
    +1 for this!

    And one idea: What if we (as providers) exchange some services among us so that to keep some backups in other baskets? For example dedicated server or VPS to have our website backups in another DC than the one we use for our services. For example this is how the recent fire incident affected the main website of the provider. They didn't have a way to make announcements and use their ticketing system because their site was hosted in their own DC.
    NetDynamics LLC - One-stop Solution for Hosting Needs
    We love Backups! Backup storage for your server backups

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    2,050
    Best thing you can do as a consumer and a business it to truly have a solid plan of action and regularly (monthly) COOP. It is horrible that the bulk of companies go with cheap providers and expect for them to be reliable. Cheap providers have a place, but using them for production workloads always ends up bad in the end if they are the only provider you use. Always run your operations out of at least two geographically diverse locations.

    Corporate Site
    Website should be running in a load balanced configuration or have the ability to fail over in case a site goes down with regular backups being done hourly.
    It should also be on at least a separate VPS from customers to reduce the blast radius in case things go wrong, even better if it is run out of separate providers from where you host your customers.
    Backups should automatically be stored locally, off-site and tested in a separate network
    Database replication should be setup and used as it makes failing over so much easier, just have that replica running all the time in a different geographic location.
    Do the same for your website, rsync changed files over and do backups at the primary and DR site, nobody ever got screwed by having proper backups.

    Customer Hosting
    This should be done in a replicated setup that is backed up up locally and offsite, do not use crappy 100Mb connections, get the good stuff and pull it through another network if possible over a VPN.
    Do yourself a big favor and pay for experienced FTEs to do this for you and have them test setting everything up at another location to ensure everything still works.

    Overall
    Hire a security professional to help you keep the entire company and customer data safe and keep up with the times.
    Keep your pricing reasonable so you can fund testing backups, research and development and stay ahead of the times.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2012
    Posts
    2,103
    I mean these sort of incidents are rare occurences so i'm not any more concerned than what I would be normally, maintain backups regularly and execute your DR plan if this happens... Of course it's time consuming to setup new servers and restore but likeliness is it'll be much quicker than trying to restore from a DC burning down or being flooded from fire supression systems.
    Clouveo - SSD/NVMe Cloud VPS & Web Hosting
    Cloud VPS Servers | DDoS Protected | Snapshots | Auto Backups | One Click Apps | Custom ISOs
    clouveo.com | Locations: [UK] London, [NL] Amsterdam, [US] Los Angeles

Similar Threads

  1. RackShack.net running out of data center space?
    By pmak0 in forum Dedicated Server
    Replies: 6
    Last Post: 08-09-2001, 05:32 PM
  2. World's Fastest Data Center?
    By ckizer in forum Web Hosting
    Replies: 18
    Last Post: 08-01-2001, 10:51 AM
  3. Plusweb/Serverhost Expands to Atlanta, GA Data Center
    By qps in forum Shared Hosting Offers
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 07-02-2001, 03:43 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •