The Finlander is on-line again after the GSF server crash

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

As many of you have noticed the Finlander forum and all SFHS sites, as well as the genealogy sites of the Genealogical Society of Finland ("GSF"), have been unavailable since beginning of Easter.

Something happened with the GSF server where all these pages and databases are located. Everything disappeared from the discs according to the GSF IT-technician. Material has now been recovered - but - for some technical or human reason the latest backup that was usable was from March 27th, 2012, ie. one year old data. Not so good news in other words...

But - we're up and running. There are chances that we could recover some of the missing material from indexing sites on the net but since that is quite time consuming and even technically impossible we will never be able to recover everything.

Ho will this show?

• message threads created after the magic date have disappeared entirely
• posts that have been posted after the magic date have also disappeared
• users who registered between 27.3.2012...27.3.2013 must reregister since you cannot be found anymore in the one year old database
• if you have changed your password after the magic date - use the one you had 27.3.2012 or request a new one
• Talko is also in an early 2012 situation. Lots of changes has to be reentered and updated. Will be corrected with time
• the Document Every Emigrant - databases lack information entered/changed last 12 months. Luckily I have a quite fresh backup on my own desktop.
• if you feel you would like to kick tires... - please do so, but little can be done to recover the material. And - for what it is worth... it was little I could do to prevent it since the backups etc. were handled by the GSF

And - finally...

There are functions the still don work 100% since so many things was done in the past 12 months that I cannot remember directly. Will try to repair those things along the road. You are welcome to drop a line if you see something that doesn't work as it did before. /Hasse

[Alf Blomqvist Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Alf Blomqvist]

Hittade rätt lösenord och kom in till forumet, efter 6-7 försök !

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

Hittade rätt lösenord och kom in till forumet, efter 6-7 försök !

Bättre sent än aldrig!

At the same time, as a comment to the problem Alf had - for all you other members.

If some of you have changed your password in the last 12 months you're in for a little more to do before you can login to the forum. -

As you perhaps know there is a link/function shown in the dialogue that follows an unsuccessful login with which you have the possibility to start a process to change your password. In order to work this "password change" -procedure need a working e-mail address, ie. the address you have stored in your Finlander forum user profile has to have a functioning email address whose inbox you can see and use.

In case you have both forgot your password and feel you haven't provided your working email address in your Finlander user profile - then you are in a spot. The only way of proceeding is to ask the administrator (=me) to manually change your email address into your profile and afterwards initiate your password change process.

[June Pelo Senior Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close June Pelo]

Thanks, Hasse. I think we're all happy to see the Forum up and running again..

[M. Waters Registered Find all posts View Profile Close M. Waters]

Hi, Hasse...When June e-mailed me about the resurrection of the Forum, I was very relieved for all those who depend on it. Is it possible that some of the users have saved parts of the "lost" forum, and could help fill in the lost portions? I don't envy you the job, but wish you luck! Midge.

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

Thanks

Hi, Hasse...When June e-mailed me about the resurrection of the Forum, I was very relieved for all those who depend on it. Is it possible that some of the users have saved parts of the "lost" forum, and could help fill in the lost portions? I don't envy you the job, but wish you luck! Midge.

Thanks, Hasse. I think we're all happy to see the Forum up and running again..

Thanks girls for your kind words!

[Karen Norwillo Registered Find all posts View Profile Close Karen Norwillo]

Welcome back. I was having withdrawal symptoms.
Karen

[solja Registered Find all posts View Profile Close solja]

I can imagine that this total crash has been very frustrating for administrators and all of you that has posted losts of information on this forum trying to help people to find their ancestors and relatives.

After the server change 27.3.2012 none of the backups has been succeeded, even though the hosting company promised to take care of it.

In fact, how one can be sure that they will do what they'll promise?

We have had Laitasaari village history pages online for one year and experienced 2 disc crashes already and one program update that caused problems. Luckily the disc crashes lost only 1-3 day materials. Now the pages have been moved into another server (same hosting company...) - but still I am worried... That's why we have decided to take occasionally backups also by ourselves.

Laitasaari history web pages http://www.laitasaari.net/ - in English http://www.laitasaari.net/laitasaari-in-english/

-Solja

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

Clouds, virtual computing and saving money...

I can imagine that this total crash has been very frustrating for administrators and all of you that has posted losts of information on this forum trying to help people to find their ancestors and relatives.

After the server change 27.3.2012 none of the backups has been succeeded, even though the hosting company promised to take care of it.

In fact, how one can be sure that they will do what they'll promise?

We have had Laitasaari village history pages online for one year and experienced 2 disc crashes already and one program update that caused problems. Luckily the disc crashes lost only 1-3 day materials. Now the pages have been moved into another server (same hosting company...) - but still I am worried... That's why we have decided to take occasionally backups also by ourselves.

Laitasaari history web pages http://www.laitasaari.net/ - in English http://www.laitasaari.net/laitasaari-in-english/

-Solja

Actually everything translates - again - to two words: money and stupidity

GSF, who's server the forums reside on, moved from a solution with own physical computers and hard drives to a sexy, modern cloud server. The solution seems a lot cheaper on paper. A cloud computer is actually an application on a computer, not a computer itself. The traditional hard drives that used to store all the documents, webpages and database material are now virtual drives, ie. parts of one or several physical hard drives or even entirely virtual drives that exist only as long as the physical server hardware is alive.

This means that there are several more weak points within the total solution if located in the "cloud". A cheaper solution for the customer with "a trade off" - the customer gets higher risks and must compensate this by investing more in bridging over the most important identified risks. One is of course - backups that are usable as roll-back sources in case of a coplete meltdown. Another is testing before going live of how the setup actually responds to any predefined worst case scenarios. Of course all this involves additional costs.

This was the money part.

I was stupid to believe that all was taken care of. Before, when everything was located on the GSF hw server in Helsinki/Helsingfors and the system began to look shaky I had taken a decision to backup the SFHS material, Finlander and Suku Forum once a week to one of my local disks - just in case. - I was stupid not to carry on taking backups after the move to the Amazon hosting servers.

In Finland we are always trying to find who to blame - it seems to be in our genes. Who should we blame? The Amazon hosting provider? The company in Finland that was contacted to do the setup according to some agreement in 2012? The customer that defined what they wanted to have set up?

Hard to say. In any case the intention with the whole move was to save money. Did somebody cut corners? Hard to say. My opinion(!) is that Amazon probably did everything according to what they promise within their small print - like every US company usually do. As usual culpa is put on the buyer. The company setting up the new virtual server probably formally did according to a specification - hard to know from outside. - I however feel that one huge thing was left undone... Checking the different "what if" scenarios. Would the whole setup work in a stress test for a number of extreme situations defined. This is something that always is done with physical servers... Worst case scenarios, "roll backs", ...

The final question is - should I need to start taking the "own backups" again of the most important material? Even though the total system probably now is secured because of the recent real life crash test...

[June Pelo Senior Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close June Pelo]

Thanks for the explanation, Hasse. Glad you don't have your head up in the 'clouds'.

[solja Registered Find all posts View Profile Close solja]

" The final question is - should I need to start taking the "own backups" again of the most important material? Even though the total system probably now is secured because of the recent real life crash test... "

I am personally so skeptic that I would take own backups at least once per month. Just in case :-)

[Hasse Admin Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Hasse]

" The final question is - should I need to start taking the "own backups" again of the most important material? Even though the total system probably now is secured because of the recent real life crash test... "

I am personally so skeptic that I would take own backups at least once per month. Just in case :-)

Agree. But first I must try to get back to some kind of "steady state". The Talko genealogy/gedcom database has to be reloaded with all the stuff that was either uploaded the first time och replaced with new material the last 12 months... Some 600.000 individuals I guess. And of course the SFHS presentation website - that was created during 2012 thus now completely vaporized. Plus...

TGIF!