DMOZ is Dead...Long Live the Open Directory Movement!
- Thread starter June Bugeye
- Start date
motsa said:You have a very limited experience, then.
By the way. I worked for a government agency where I handled extremly large databases (I would be willing to guess they were larger than the ODP's but I cant prove it). We never experienced 24 hours of downtime in my 2 years there. I am still in touch with a lot of the workers to this day, and I have never heard them talk about any kind of significant downtime since.
That explains what? I have no idea what you or that smiley face means. Feal free to clue me in. Is it that you are making fun of a government agency? If so, then why? If you guys want to get personal and off topic why not PM me rather than ruining another post.
For the record it was credits towards my B.S. in CIS and it was paid.
For the record it was credits towards my B.S. in CIS and it was paid.
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They were lucky never to had a serious problem. I just hope they are prepared if it happens.chaz7979 said:
I have worked for both a governement agency and a large financial company. The database of the financial company was larger than DMOZ and we could only guarantee low downtimes by constantly keeping two copies of the database insync. These copies are located in different computercentra (wouldn't want to bet on a airplane crashing in your computercentrum). If one of the copies is damaged all work can continue on the other copy.
We have calculated what would happen if we had only one copy. Because of the size of the database we would need 6 to 7 days to restore it if the complete database was lost. This ofcourse for a financial company would be the end. Keeping both computercentra and all our systems duplicated costs millions a years.
In my over 20 years in IT I have seen several companies go banckrupt because they couldn't recover from a major dissaster, and some had good backup and recover plans. DMOZ now has such a dissaster and only because AOL is behind us we can recover.
My comment was simply what I wrote. If you've never seen a site experience this kind of downtime, then you have limited experience. Congratulations. I wish I could say the same. Sure, it's not common...but it happens.
In any case, anything beyond what we've put in the announcement is really just speculation. Surely we all have better things to do than sit around trading conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios. It is what it is.
Azselendor
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I've seen massive technical trouble like this happen before as well, an on-site/standby medical service had their website, email, customer database, phone system and financial informations all on one server. They woke up Monday to find their server went from the technology to boat anchor. They never found out what happened to cause the exact failure (according to IT technician) and were down for 18 days while they awaited new parts to arrive and be assembled, plus data recovery services took another 2 weeks on top of that and only salvaged half the data on the dead server. They have been financially wrecked for the last 7 months as a result (many clients dropped because of this) and their reputation is crippled.
Sadly, the company didn't take my recommendation to implement a regular backup plan for the server and put their email and website on a separate server and use a traditional phone system.
While that isn't what I think happened to the DMOZ, I do believe it is on a similar level of what is going on at the DMOZ now. All anyone can do is be patient and hope they resolve it soon.
Sadly, the company didn't take my recommendation to implement a regular backup plan for the server and put their email and website on a separate server and use a traditional phone system.
While that isn't what I think happened to the DMOZ, I do believe it is on a similar level of what is going on at the DMOZ now. All anyone can do is be patient and hope they resolve it soon.
azselender, what you describe sounds much like what I envision happening on our (one) development server. The problem is not the hardware: I suspect a couple of days to a week at most, swapping out any still-malfunctioning components under simple tests; then load the database (many hours per iteration, I'd guess; chaz's 30-minute government databases are the kind of things I'd call "piddlin' to small" and reload daily). Then data validation, attempted recovery, possibly with some program recovery or repair also.
The ODP is what _I_ would call a "large" database. And I'm used to database operation taking hours or days.
The ODP is what _I_ would call a "large" database. And I'm used to database operation taking hours or days.
The Old Sarge
Member
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Anybody never heard that one?
Anybody never heard that one?
The Old Sarge
Member
Chaz,
I worked for government for more than 21 years. I saw so many major problems with the gov's computers I could write a book. ... if I understood the problems ...
More than a few times one of our major systems was down for weeks at a time while the techies alternately huddled and scrambled.
I worked for government for more than 21 years. I saw so many major problems with the gov's computers I could write a book. ... if I understood the problems ...
More than a few times one of our major systems was down for weeks at a time while the techies alternately huddled and scrambled.
motsa said:
I do not have limited experience. Nor do I have limited experience in experiencing dowtime. So I am not sure what you mean. I have experienced plenty of downtime none of which has ever lasted this long. Do you think AOL has ever gone down for a month? If Billy Joe's used Car website went down for 30 days I would not be suprised. Its all relative.
I wasnt really speculating either all I said what whatever it is, it's HUGE. I just tossed in my 2 cents because people were talking about this downtime like it was a hiccup, and its not.
Hutch they were not small. Billions of records and millions of transactions daily.
I saw major problems as well. I am not saying that problems do not happen. What I am saying is that there are backups and redundancies I have never seen any downtime like this. I can deduce from what you said that you worked for the government at a time when we were less technologicaly advanced. Maybe that is why you saw so many problems. Now days thing are much more problem free.
The Old Sarge said:
I saw major problems as well. I am not saying that problems do not happen. What I am saying is that there are backups and redundancies I have never seen any downtime like this. I can deduce from what you said that you worked for the government at a time when we were less technologicaly advanced. Maybe that is why you saw so many problems. Now days thing are much more problem free.
That is true. But you wrote "I have never seen any site go down for this amount of time". You didn't qualify that to mean just large sites like AOL; you said "any". Hence my response, which I stand by: if you truly have never seen any website, large or small, be out this long then you have a very limited experience.
Please. Technological advancements just mean more things can go wrong.
Semantics.
When talking about the ODP and this downtime I would hope that people would know that I meant like sites and not "look at my kitty - fluffles" type geocities sites.
True they can, they can also be fixed much more quickly. It's not even comparable. Some of the recovery is even automated at this point. Something that was not imaginable years ago.
We can argue about this stuff all day, the editors can try and downplay this all they want, the fact is something is VERY wrong. I dont see much to talk about. Be realistic this is bad, so bad that we will probably never truthfuly be told what really happend.
When talking about the ODP and this downtime I would hope that people would know that I meant like sites and not "look at my kitty - fluffles" type geocities sites.
True they can, they can also be fixed much more quickly. It's not even comparable. Some of the recovery is even automated at this point. Something that was not imaginable years ago.
We can argue about this stuff all day, the editors can try and downplay this all they want, the fact is something is VERY wrong. I dont see much to talk about. Be realistic this is bad, so bad that we will probably never truthfuly be told what really happend.
You remind me of a manager at my workplace who said "Words don't matter." I'm not psychic -- I have to presume that you meant what you wrote as you wrote it. If you meant something else, you should have written something else.
Looks like it's time for us to open up a "Conspiracy Theories" thread so you all can speculate to your hearts' content.