PBase been down for a couple of days

[gregbradley]

I use PBase to post my astro-images.

There've been down for a couple of days now.

I hope they haven't lost any images.

I have a few images to post but no site for now.

Anyone else using them?

Greg.

[Octane]

Yes, so annoying.

Existing images that I have linked to, take eons to load, too.

Hope they get it all sorted soon.

Regards,
Humayun

[marc4darkskies]

Yeah - quite annoying. I thought of moving to Smugmug, they have a very slick interface. The only problem with them is you can't have an image title and separate image caption/description (where the title always sticks with the thumbnail and the caption is only displayed when you look at the image). I.e. with Smugmug it's either the whole caption or nothing for thumbnails (last time I checked anyway).

Cheers, Marcus

[dpastern]

Down a few days suggests something major to me. I'd say they've been cracked.

Dave

[TrevorW]

26-Sep-2009 19:25 UTC / 15:25 EST

The database recovery is still progressing nicely. While we are working through the data recovery as quickly as we can, preserving data integrity is of utmost importance. Because of this, we are copying all of the data over to a new database machine, which should improve database performance compared to the previous server. Copying such large amounts of data around takes a very long time, but we already have much of the data up and running on the new machine. As we continue to import more and more of the data into the new database, we are checking data integrity and preparing for PBase to come back online. We will keep you posted as we know more.



25-Sep-2009 22:55 UTC/ 18:55 EST

PBase is temporarily unavailable. There was a power failure at our datacenter on the morning of 24-Sep-2009. When power came back, the main database server did not come back online properly. We have been working with Oracle support to get things back up and running as quickly as possible. The steps we have been taking with Oracle's support technicians are progressing nicely. It takes a lot of time because we have to preserve data integrity by running new backups and copying them to another server before taking some of the recovery steps. The last big step we took did not work as well as we had hoped, but parts of the database are now functioning. The Oracle guys are working with us to get the rest of it working again. We will keep you posted as we know more.

We know this is an inconvenience. It is excruciating for us that the site has been down at all, especially for so long. Please know that we are doing everything we can to get things worked out in a timely fashion. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
Slug and The PBase Team

[dpastern]

That'll do it as well ;-) Of course, what they tell us, and what actually happened, are 2 different things (call me a paranoid ******* lol).

Dave

[gregbradley]

Gee whiz its been down now for about 4 days.

Are there any other similar sites.

What sort of professional hosting site doesn't have a contingency plan in case of power failure - did that somehow catch them by surprise?

I thought these sorts of companies have uninterruptable power supply systems as part of the setup.

Greg.

[dpastern]

If it's a very large dbase (quite likely), it could take quite some time to get it copied across to the new machine. I haven't played with Oracle, but I imagine it could be a bugger to get set up right etc.

Dave

[Octane]

Greg,

You'll probably find that pbase doesn't do the hosting themselves -- they are probably a customer of a data warehouse, just like any other IT company nowadays.

I feel really bad for them. I've been a customer for a while now, and, love the site to bits.

Then again, anything is better than Fl*ckr.

Regards,
Humayun

[TrevorW]

The sites back up and all my images are there :thumbsup:

[DavidU]

Good stuff.