Downtime? On new server!

This last week I've had numerous time outs trying to log on to NPN. Other sites came up fine, so I'm pretty sure it's this site. Have others had this issue?

Update - new server - see last post in thread.

Me too.

Jim, I've seen at least 4 or 5 extended outages this week.... what's been happening?

Lon

I have experienced this, as well. I am using IE7 and Opera. Other sites come up just fine.

-PB

To all;

Our server is experiencing some major problems. We've had an unresolved issue with it for the last month or so, but since Thursday the problem has become much worse and we're now re-booting it multiple times a day.

We will have to temporarily move the sites to another server until we repair/replace our own. We expect to do the move early this week, which will result in the usual issues of down time during the move and some forum/gallery quirks once we're on the temporary server. Ah, the joys of keeping a website online 24/7...

Our apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks for bearing with us!

Same here, I just thought it was on my end

The inconvenience of downtime during the move will be worth it, Jim.

Thanks for all the hard work you and Donna put in to make NPN the great site that it is!

I just goes to show how much goes on behind the scenes at a busy site like this. This is great time to say thank you NPN for all the invisible work that you do. So, Thanks! Maybe I should start a new thread

Uptime

This week I've noticed that NPN always comes up right away. Other sites don't, so I'm pretty sure NPN is running right. Anyone notice this?

Pete D. no offense Scott, I'm just sayin' . . .

Update - the person who is supposed to swap out the server had to tend to a family emergency in FL, so we're hoping to get this problem solved early next week.

Sorry for the delay, thanks for your patience.

Update 3-27

We had the server checked out and there's no apparent hardware problems with it. This doesn't mean there aren't any, it's just that if there are they're not obvious.

Dave the Programmer (DTP), our server adminstrator, will be back this week. His mother died last week and he has been in Florida. The server goes down multiple times a day (for reasons as of yet are still undertermined) and I've been re-booting it myself, which as you can imagine is a real pain in the arse - especially when it goes down when I'm not in my office or at night while I'm asleep.

Thanks for bearing with us - we hope to have this resolved soon!

Jim, I'm just guessing here but from years of working in data centers this sounds to me like the symptoms of overheating. It might be worth checking with the ISP to make sure the server is properly cooled and ventilated. If they have it in some remote corner rack you may want to insist on moving it closer to the A/C vents.

Guy

Right Guy, or it could be a server that is just over loaded and when useage peaks it goes bye bye due to the software getting its nickers twisted??

When its up its a very fast site. I guess that's partly because the image files are small...

In any case the site is great fun so its frustrating when its down. Jim we are with you -- good luck getting things under control.

Frank

Do they have a twelve step program for NPN'ers who have been suffering for the last week or so?

Actually, the timing of these issues has been good for me, I've been so busy the last week or so I haven't had time to come play lately.

Will keep checking back. Good luck on finding and correcting the issue.

Update 3-28

We believe the worst is now over. There may be a few more outages, but hopefully not.

There appears to have been several issues. One was software related and the other was a "not quite right" hard drive in the RAID array. We have also updated the forum software to automatically delete all non-archived forum posts older than one year, which was supposed to be working but was not. We trimmed the database last night and a new hard drive is being installed in the next day or so.

Our sincere thanks to everyone for their patience!

Whew . . . I was starting to get paranoid that y'all didn't like me any more. Getting in in the am has been easy enough but haven't been able to take an evening stroll through nature for the last couple of evenings.
Seriously though, I was thinking maybe the sight was getting overpopulated because of the awesome work being shown here. I've seen it happen on other sights. Bigger faster server time?

Update 3-29

Well, it looks like we still have some problems. Our server adminstrator's mother died last week and he is back on the job tomorrow, so we will hopefully get this resolved quickly once he's back and can focus entirely on this problem. At this point, we'll probably end up buying a new server.

I have recieved many emails expressing frustration in regards to the problem. My sincere apologies to all for this inconveneince, and we'll do our best to get it fixed once and for all over the next few days.

Jim, we're with you and I certainly understand. I work in IT as my regular job and we just had two server failures last week. They can be a pain. Thanks for your diligence and I know you are doing your best.

Jim, thanks for all you're doing to correct the matter. Yes, it's frustrating for us not to get on but that's only because we get so excited to see all the great work being posted Thanks, Jim...I appreciate all that you do.

OK, we're on a new server. The old one was definitely the culprit so there should be no more outages.

If any of you encounter any difficulty using the site, please let me know. There may be some tweaking needed to get everything just right again.

Our sincere thanks to all for your patience!

Cool. On Vista?

No, it's like Apache or Unix or something, dude. I'm not the server geek!

As somewhat of a 'server geek' I can understand the pain that you have been going through Jim. Thanks for all that you do! I wonder if anyone out there developed an NPN patch to use to curb the addiction during the downtime.

Nathan

As a Windows programmer, I feel better that this server is running Apache under some flavor of Unix.

- Dan.

Jim,

Thanks so much for your efforts! Please extend my thanks to Dave for his efforts, too.

-PB

Hi Jim,
an huge thanks for your efforts!

Thanks again to all for hanging tough while we got it sorted out!