Complete server failure chez moi - email, the lot.
Will be mostly off the air until further notice.
2 Likes
Gather round the piano for a sing-song, like you used to do in the old days.
3 Likes
Good luck with that! Xx
1 Like
Yeah, right.
2 Likes
What I’m discovering at the mo is that when you create a large server with multiple disks and RAID arrays which have a complex interrelationship with multiple virtual machines some of which have encrypted filesystems and specifically designed not to work if split into parts.
Is that it’s quite hard to bring up just a bit of it.
Me thinks my BCP needs work.
It’s quite hard to imagine the monster you’ve created 
. Good luck, love to offer advice (I know, switch off and back on) if i knew what you were talking about.
It isn’t
There are photos on the site - here it is during a previous maintenance/upgrade episode
Though that is the “old” motherboard which is now in its French clone
This is it with the “new” (now presumed dead) motherboard in situ.
1 Like
Is Calgon any use?
2 Likes
Probably not 
It’s only washing machines that live longer with Calgon.
Not servers.
2 Likes
We had one of those at Tropical Imaging in Turks & Caicos.
Supposed to be proof against hard disk failure, until two disks in the array died in quick succession.
Since then I don’t do RAID.
1 Like
Mirrored raid is good, but striped raid is just begging for data loss.
1 Like
RAID6 is what you want.
But RAID won’t protect you against the motherboard dying.
Which is where I’m at
Have it out of the case and - “It’s worse than that he’s dead, Jim”.
Don’t know if it is motherboard, CPU or RAM at this point but the (spare) PSU is just going into “tick” mode so I suspect a CPU power supply FET has shorted, time will tell if it took the CPU with it.
I have spare motherboards which are known “good, working” just to cover this scenario. It’s crap timing as I was supposed to be preparing the talk I need to give on Wednesday - but I can do that tomorrow and/or wing it, it was only supposed to be 10 minutes.
What I don’t have, and now wish I did, is a drop in replacement, of course the m/b being a couple of generations old is now obsolete and I am not going to be able to buy a new one - so the conundrum is do I buy an eBay replacement or do I go the whole hog and get a new motherboard - which means new CPU and RAM. I *might* be able to get a Z790 motherboard which will “only” need the RAM upgrading (assuming the CPU is OK).
Short term I’d like to get my email server back, I don’t want to be without email for the next week - which is a virtual machine so should move homes. I can’t remember the details of the VM though.
It’s OK if you do RAID 10
Riiiiiight, not an option then.
Replacement prices for Z790 boards are eye watering as well.
No it isn’t. 
My data storage needs are simple and few, and I like the simplicity of JBOD.
2 Likes
I’ll take your word for it. TBH RAID isn’t really of interest to me as a home user and photographer with relatively simple requirements. I do still have a D-Link NAS laying around that would let me do mirrored drives, but it was slow (a decade ago) and not worth bothering with.
1 Like
The “simplicity” of JBOD is that you will simply lose data if a disk dies
You have backups though, I presume
Yes - I have my data on multiple BODs and most of the time on more than one Mac.
Also I never erase and reuse my camera memory cards until a job has been delivered to the client.
Really old stuff gets archived on hard drives, I am now on drive no. 20. Though it’s rare that I need to delve into them.
1 Like
For someone going off air for a while your posting is more prolific than usual 
6 Likes
presumably the semaphore backup is still working.
2 Likes
Or the pigeons have been reprieved
2 Likes