BOOM!!!

As you have likely noticed, The Spiced Life has been down for the last three days.  This is an interesting story which I am sure I will find funny some day.  More details below on that.  But the important part: we are back up — and restoring our content as fast as we can.

As to the causes, our problems can be summed up in one word: BOOM!!!.  This is a bit of an oversimplification, and makes a few assumptions.  But the basic principle is sound.  BOOM.

As readers know, about a week before the BOOM, we switched the Blog to WordPress.  At the same time, we switched to a new server.  A private server owned by a friend of mine, one that is very reliable and very well run — it hasn’t had any downtime in over a year.  For protection, all data is stored on a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID).  This is a set of eleven disks that keep multiple copies of the data.  The only way things can really go down, or data can be lost, is if all eleven disks go down.  Which is just flat out inconceivable.

BOOM

The last three days have been spent with my friend trying to figure out what happened, why all 11 disks are down, getting them back up, and recovering the data.  He has worked as fast as he can, but has been hampered by geographical difficulties: the server is in Virginia, and he is slightly outside of Virginia.  (Or, more specifically, in England.)  But he has worked his long-distance magic and the 11 disks are finally back up.  We are recovering the data.  We are recovering our look.  Hopefully, by the end of the day, it will be all back to where it was and we will be back to life as normal.  Or, as normal as it ever gets.

— John (husband / site administrator)