June 24th, ooooops!

[CS]

What happened to the server yesterday? I could not get into the site because the server was not responding. This started yesterday morning (I don't recall the exact time, but it was mid-morning,  MST), . and was still the case when I went to bed at 2200 MST.

Today, all is well with connecting, but I don't see any reference posted about yesterday's site troubles, causing me to wonder if I was alone in not being able to connect.

[Eric Borgström]

On top of the page:
News:
We have had some server issues…

Admittedly sparse information.

[Fons Baerken]

Some communication on the downtime would be nice.

[CS]

On top of the page:
News:We have had some server issues so the site has been out of reach. Sorry for the inconvenience![/font]

Yep, sure as shoot'in, it's there Thanks, I had not noticed that news location before, and he way my macular degeneration is progressing, I would gave probably remained unaware of it, but for your input. 

[CS]

Some communication on the downtime would be nice.

I take it you won't be satisfied with "from beginning to end"? 

[Birna Rørslett]

We lost entirely contact with our server. After dealing with site support we had them rebooting the server physically to bring us back.

Total downtime was nearly 24 hours which is the longest we have had under ordinary operation. Nothing we could do in the meantime as the server was assessed, tested for functional issues,  and then brought back to life.

I'm en route to an isolated island to spend time there with my girl friend, so we cross fingers there will no no further outages whilst I'm off the grid so to speak.

[Akira]

We lost entirely contact with our server. After dealing with site support we had them rebooting the server physically to bring us back.

Total downtime was nearly 24 hours which is the longest we have had under ordinary operation. Nothing we could do in the meantime as the server was assessed, tested for functional issues,  and then brought back to life.

I'm en route to an isolated island to spend time there with my girl friend, so we cross fingers there will no no further outages whilst I'm off the grid so to speak.

Thank you for the clarification, Birna.  Enjoy your vacation!

[Erik Lund]

Some communication on the downtime would be nice.

Sorry there was no way to do anything about it and sending out e-mails to everyone, well we could maybe do that but privacy around personal data are quite strict;)


Hope to keep you all informed as good as possible in The future

[Birna Rørslett]

To add what Erik said, as the member list is on the server, we had no access to the current data set either. I had a local copy, but it was not updated, and being away from my local network left me with zero options any way.

Usually unscheduled downtime, which is s pretty rare incident these days, only occurs for minutes or a few hours at most. This time we were hit hard by hardware issues and a total restore and reboot was required. Apparently no data was lost in this incident, which always is  beneficial.

[Hugh_3170]

Hey folks we are up and running again - that is what is important.  Furthermore NG has been a relatively glitch free site IMHO, so we need to keep that in mind.  I find NG to be a valuable site to me and a source of great information and one that I enjoy logging in to. 

Thank you to everyone involved in getting NG back on the air again. 

[Nasos Kosmas]

Hey folks we are up and running again - that is what is important.  Furthermore NG has been a relatively glitch free site IMHO, so we need to keep that in mind.  I find NG to be a valuable site to me and a source of great information and one that I enjoy logging in to. 

Thank you to everyone involved in getting NG back on the air again. 

+1

[ColinM]

Its lovely to be able to "see" you all again.
Thank you to Birna, Erik and all the other people who help behind the scenes.

This seems a relatively rare occurrence - once people start asking for extra resilience, banner messages etc the NG running costs will rise. I'm sure the platform hosts will advise cause etc in due course.

Meanwhile, i hope the light is as good for all of you as it is here in the UK

[Birna Rørslett]

Running NG is already quite expensive as we need to operate a dedicated VPS with sufficient resources, but so far income from our esteemed subscribers has managed to keep the vessel afloat. However if the current trend of dwindling numbers of subscribers continues, we might find ourselves in dire straits indeed.

Thus the most valuable contribution each member can do is becoming a subscriber (supporter) The outage we experienced can be a reminder of what the future might be if NG is no longer financially self supported and has to shut down. We have no ads and do not sell any information to third parties, so the annual subscriber (modest) fee is our only income source. The NG Crew take no profit and pitch in purely on an idealistic basis. We will not even accept donations for reaons of transparency.

Just taking the opportunity to state these perhaps not obvious facts.

[golunvolo]

I have so much to thank NG, founders and members alike, for the photographer I am today. Ideas, inspiration, technical knowledge, support, guidance, amazing meetings... Invaluable and generous shared experience. This is a plea to all of you, guest and not supporters to think about what you get from this site and its members. I´m happy to do my part to keep it alive.  No pressure. No ads or sold information! Integrity. You name it.

   Thank you all.

[Bent Hjarbo]

Hey folks we are up and running again - that is what is important.  Furthermore NG has been a relatively glitch free site IMHO, so we need to keep that in mind.  I find NG to be a valuable site to me and a source of great information and one that I enjoy logging in to. 

Thank you to everyone involved in getting NG back on the air again. 

+2