After a meeting with Angelica about my final project was feeling energized and ready to take action! Our web developer was working on some updates to the Ruby on Rails Platform, changing some settings on the site, and giving the GSN an updated look. Everything was falling into place to have a new and improved Generator School Network.
Then…
The GSN was mysteriously down due to server maintenance. Our web contractor submitted a help ticket to our server and received this message in return:
We regret to inform you that the host machine that Cloud Server, gsn-demo, resides on cannot be recovered despite the very best efforts of our Engineering and Data Center Operations teams. It has been determined that this server has experienced complete data loss.
If you have a recent server image, your next step should be to build a new server from that image. Should you require the same IP, please contact support prior to deleting the impacted server from your account and we will assist you in sharing the IP to the new device.
If you do not have a current server image, your next step will be to build a new server from a stock image and upload data from your local backup.
Finally, you will need to delete the impacted server from your account to prevent any further billing associated with the device.
Say What? Essentially the company that we pay every month to back up everything just stopped working. And this would not have been a problem except the server took a back up of a broken website and the site had not been externally backed up since SEPTEMBER! Which means we lost everything from September to the end of January that users and our staff had uploaded.
At that point we had to decide to bring back the September version of the site or just wait two weeks and launch the new and improved GSN. We chose the latter because it meant things would move faster. We came up with some clever marketing in the meantime:
The GSN is experiencing flu-like symptoms which requires rest.
Don’t worry — it isn’t contagious.
Our cloud server crashed taking back-up copies with it.
What this means to you: the GSN will be offline for about two weeks for rest and recovery. When it comes back on February 14 it will be better than ever with an updated look and all the resources of the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.
In the meantime, keep connected on Twitter, Facebook, and the K-12, HE, or CBO listservs. Visit nylc.org for service-learning resources, stories, and news, and check out our YouTube channel for recorded webinars. If you have any questions, please email us at gsn@nylc.org.
Thank you for wishing the GSN a speedy recovery!
Lana Peterson
Deep breathes. Bad timing. I was trying to be grateful we didn’t loose everything. Needless to say this shifted my project a bit until I was able to get everything back to speed. I gave myself a crisis badge because… well I didn’t cry and crawl under my desk, and I really wanted to.
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