Monday
Sep222008
Ugly In So Many Ways
Monday, September 22, 2008 at 6:31AM
Yes Leoville is looking pretty awful. I'm reconstructing it from scratch. Fortunately, as you can see, all the posts survived the apocalyptic demise of my server's RAID 5 Array. Unfortunately, none of the Wordpress customizations did. So I'm downloading the plug-ins, restoring the template, hacking the CSS, and desperately trying to remember the changes I made.
All the comments are safe with Disqus and will return when I turn on the Disqus plug-in. (Done. Thanks, Disqus!)
Unfortunately, the image directory was not saved. That means all the attached images will be blank. I will be able to recreate some of them from my local archives, but most are lost forever. -sigh-
All of this is because I was too cheap to buy the many gigabytes of storage required to backup that data. It was a false economy. I've purchased 200GB of storage from my host, Softlayer, at the extortionate rate of $180/month. (That's twice what a hard drive of that size would cost outright - 2400% more per year - and I thought the cell phone companies were bad.) And I'll be setting up rsync and S3 for a secondary backup, as well.
Meanwhile it's back to the depressing and very time consuming work of fixing this place up again. Now I know, in a very small way, how it must feel to survive a hurricane.
Reader Comments (14)
Don't worry Leo. It'll go much quicker this time. You've already done it once. ;-)
Good luck, Leo!
Why don't you Carbonite it? A server is "just a computer" so they should allow that ... They're a sponsor on your radio show. http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-3085221-10544205" target="_blank">www.Carbonite.com
Wish could help, but I can't do much from Ohio.
why not jungle disk for your backups? much much cheaper
Don't worry about the look Leo...the magic is in the words, not the window dressing.
Don't worry about the website complications Leo. I'll still be a frequent visitor as always. Are you going to change the layout of the website too, or are you just going to focus on backups and reliability?
a hard drive in a cardboard box is a little different than storage space on a server. You should check out http://mosso.com">mosso.com for hosting all your domains.
Jungledisk is simply an interface to Amazon S3, which Leo states that he is also using.
Also, I'd imagine that Jungledisk isn't designed for servers.
Hey Leo, love the shows and big fan. Site's looking good. I know the pain, I'm redoing mine right now.
If you need any illustrations done, let me know, it's what I do for a living. It would be a pleasure to do some work for you, give something back for all the great podcasts. :) Check out the likenesses I did of Steve & Allan at Less Everything: http://b.lesseverything.com/">http://b.lesseverything.com/
Thanks. I've fixed it.
I think Softlayer is fantastic - if expensive. I have two dedicated servers. Both Quad core Xeons with 100Mbps connections and 2TB/month bandwidth for $1000/month. Softlayer is quick to fix any hardware problems, but I don't buy managed service. I'm responsible for my own backup and software maintenance. I prefer it that way because that's one of the ways I learn how to do stuff!
Perhaps because Carbonite is not what it claims to be? I have had a 6 month ordeal trying to restore data. They say my ISP has them throttled to 350 kps. I am getting 2% of my data a day! I have spent HOURS online and on the phone with my ISP and C. When the ISP tests I have 1792/448 when I test online with servers around the world I have an average 1300/375 speed. Who should I believe?
CrashPlan is SO much better than Carbonite or JungleDisk -
Backup on-site, off-site and online -- no monthly fees with your own destinations.
It has better compression, faster backup & restores, and most importantly - WORKS.