Geocaching.com Down?

[cacheseekers]

Latest news I’ve seen on twitter:

langenu: Geocaching.com down all day thanks to #fisherfire rumors suggest it will be up around 4am eastern.

[draconis dave]

I’m a geek about backups.

I have a text file for every find that mirror my log entries. All my caches could be re-submitted from my files I used to prepare them, and don’t get me started about all the GPX and Pocket Queries I have never deleted!

I hope everything comes back up. I mean, all this stuff is on hard drives somewhere?

[zuma]

I would have to assume that a company as large as gc.com would have multiple backups….I think there is little to worry about here. All will be back to normal soon.

z

[zuma]

Jeremy irish posted this a minute ago:

Jeremy Irish Internap still doesn’t feel comfortable with an ETA but my guess is we’ll be online by 10:30pm (1 1/2 hours) #fisherfire

(I am gonna go to bed and get up early to run my PQ….sure that it will be there.)

z

[Mathman]

I guess if we all need new names, I would choose a shorter name…..perhaps I would be known as Zuma. Wouldn’t that be a kick? 😆

[Jeremy]

Reading the articles, it appears this was just a small fire that knocked out power to the data center. I’m sure the gc.com servers and the data are OK, so there is no need to panic… armageddon is not here (yet). 😀

Here is an article with a photo of people carrying server equipment out of the building:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10279084-93.html

@Averith wrote:

I was just wondering does the WGA website have an off site back up??? If not, perhaps would be something to seriously consider.

If you are talking about off site data backups, not an off site backup web server, then yes, we have those. Once a day the contents of the WGA website database (all users, posts, votes, etc.) are copied to a remote server. Twice a day the database and all server files are backed up internally.

I have a development web server that is a near “mirror” of the WGA server that could be pressed into service as a backup with some tweaks in the event of a major catastrophe. This has never been needed and there are no contingency plans for using it, and I’m knocking on a big piece of wood right now hoping I didn’t jinx things by mentioning the possibility of big problems requiring the use of a backup server.

We do have the capability to put up a static page explaining the problem if the WGA server goes down. We have used this twice. It would be nice if geocaching.com could do the same… then folks could at least get some information about the outage instead of nothing / an error.

Really they should have spread their servers out at multiple sites and not put “all their eggs in one basket”. But I can understand why they have things set up this way, as cost and complexity increase exponentially with multiple sites, plus there are often performance bottlenecks and glitches when trying to replicate / synchronize all the data.

[cacheseekers]

Jeremy Irish: RT @rockhawk Full power restored at Fisher Plaza but data centers still not allowing servers until rooms are cooled <2-4 hours #fisherfire

[furfool]

Still can’t connect.

[TurkeyTime]

Argh. This is awful.
Woke up sure that the site would be back. 🙁
Is this going to have a name, like “Black Friday” or “The Fire on The Fourth”, so we can tell future generations of cachers that we were around during this situation?
The worst part is that I had a PQ downloaded for the city we planned on heading to tomorrow, but I deleted it, figuring I would just download a new PQ today with the newest info. I wonder if I would be able to use a recovery program like Recuva to un-delete it? Hmmm.
I do feel sorry for Groundspeak…I bet they are sweating bullets over this one. And the last thing you want is rioting geocachers! People would be getting choked with GPS straps and beaten with walking sticks.

[Averith]

Can you imagine how we would act if something happened to the GPS satellites?!?!?!!?! 👿 👿 👿

[TurkeyTime]

Funny you should mention that, Averith…
I just read this news story the other day:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/165126/gps_system_could_begin_to_fail_within_a_year.html

Now I read this morning that it’s NOT true and that the GPS system will stay fine, but other people are arguing that.
Man. This is a scary time to be a geocacher. 🙁

[furfool]

I wonder if dues paying members will be getting credit for the downtime?

[Averith]

@furfool wrote:

I wonder if dues paying members will be getting credit for the downtime?

Now that’s an interesting question, wonder if they have some fine print we agreed to when we signed up for our accounts about that. I’ll look………….oh wait I can’t the @#$@#$@ site is down!!! 😕

[sandlanders]

We have gotten very few emails since yesterday, even non-geocaching ones. Wonder if those servers are down, too. Also, a lot of advertising stuff from companies we have had past communication with is nonexistent.

[Averith]

Kind of scary how a “small” fire in just one location can effect so many different things on the internet.

[Author]

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