SMC Server Crashed

[Keith Outten]

Last night the motherboard in the SMC server failed. This morning Aaron and I installed our spare and brought the server back online about 10:45am. Considering the difficulty of diagnosing the problem and having to deal with the large SCSI drive array the hardware swap went well, at least from our vantage point.

Honestly we were concerned that the problem involved the hard drive array initially and were relieved the problem involved a part that we had on hand. We will take this as a warning and immediately spec out a new server to replace the current machine.

Whew! How do you spell relief?

[Steve Clardy]

Was wondering why I couldn't get on early this morning.

[Al Navas]

... Whew! How do you spell relief?

I am glad you got it up and running, Keith! I thought something else may have happened, like someone tripped the ON switch. Good going on the quick diagnosis.


Al

[Keith Outten]

Was wondering why I couldn't get on early this morning.

We gave some thought to putting up a temporary box just to let everyone know that we had hardware problems. Rather than stop to put another machine online we just kept working on the SMC server in hopes that we could get back online.

Had we not been able to make the necessary repairs this morning we would have placed an old web server up with a status page. Frankly I have just about had it with hardware problems and will be relieved to see a brand new server online as fast as possible.

[Wes Bischel]

Thanks again to you and Aaron for all the hard work keeping things going. It is appreciated.

Wes

[Dennis Peacock]

Wish I could simply send you one of our retired Large Scale Unix boxes.

[Boyd Gathwright]

Last night the motherboard in the SMC server failed. This morning Aaron and I installed our spare and brought the server back online about 10:45am. Considering the difficulty of diagnosing the problem and having to deal with the large SCSI drive array the hardware swap went well, at least from our vantage point.

Honestly we were concerned that the problem involved the hard drive array initially and were relieved the problem involved a part that we had on hand. We will take this as a warning and immediately spec out a new server to replace the current machine.

Whew! How do you spell relief?

Keith,

.... May I make a suggestion. I run Two (2) hard drives on one (1) machine. I run ONLY one (1) drive at a time. The other stays disconnected and every now and than (approx. weekly) I backup the first drive to the second. I use a completely independent operating system from DOS to accomplish this. This is available to you, if you're interested. If so, shoot me a PM.


Boyd

.

[John Miliunas]

Whew! How do you spell relief?

How??? S.M.C.....That's how!!! I was going through withdrawals, fer cryin' out loud!!! Thanks guys! Glad you got it back up and, FWIW, with all the many, many servers we run on our platform here on campus, we've found the Intel-based Dells to be extremely reliable. Just MHO...

[Michael Ballent]

I would suggest getting your feet wet with clustering I am assuming you are using Linux and not Windoze so it would be the cost of the new server and some sort of load balancer, which could be another Linux box

[Stu Ablett in Tokyo Japan]

Nice to be back, thanks for the hard work.

I was not really worried, I just blamed the trouble on Mr. Hart , or Mr. Hoyt..........

Cheers!

[Jim Becker]

.... May I make a suggestion. I run Two (2) hard drives on one (1) machine. I run ONLY one (1) drive at a time. The other stays disconnected and every now and than (approx. weekly) I backup the first drive to the second. I use a completely independent operating system from DOS to accomplish this. This is available to you, if you're interested. If so, shoot me a PM.

.

Boyd, the SMC server is running what is called an "array" based on Keith's post...which is multiple drives with the information spread across them and the ability to rebuild automatically if a single drive in the array fails. It's very different than your PC which only records a file on a single drive at one time.
--------

Keith, it must have been failing for the past couple of days...my response was really bad including the need to request a page multiple times. 'Glad you had the parts available!

[Bart Leetch]

"My response was really bad including the need to request a page multiple times." Me too.

[Tyler Howell]

I've had a really bad day.
No SMC fix first thing in the morning is like a day with out sunshine .
Thank good ness there was a lot of sunshine

[Norman Hitt]

an "array" for the past couple of days...my response was really bad including the need to request a page multiple times. 'Glad you had the parts available!

Me three, (same as above). I was "Really Lost" last night without the Forum, but Thanks to you and Aaron for your Hard work and perseverance, We're UP & RUNNING Again.

[John Bailey]

Thanks guys,

I really appreciate it.

John