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The following is a reprint of Webmaster John Lester's post on MGH Forums... * * * The Great Server Room Flood of 2003 Hi everyone, Well, it was Murphy's Law again. Just as I went out of town for a meeting, a malfunctioning air conditioner decided to turn the computer server room where BrainTalk lives into a swamp. The BrainTalk server went down, and it went down hard. Luckily there was no major hardware damage except for the UPS connected to the BrainTalk server, which went to that UPS pasture in the sky after going for a swim. Here's the timeline as far as I can figure it out: 1) Server room air conditioner flakes out and starts pumping water into server room. Floor starts getting wet. 2) UPS connected to BrainTalk Server was sitting on floor. 3) Fortunately, BrainTalk Server is NOT sitting right on floor...it is a few inches above the wetness. 4) UPS gets wet, gets toasted, and sends a dying power spike to the BrainTalk server, frying one of the power supplies in the server. 5) BrainTalk crashes...merrily corrupting data on the way out. Fortunately, the death of the power supply doesn't seem to have caused any hardware problems. 6) John notices dead server while out of town. Tries to remotely fix it. Notices it is REALLY dead...totally offline. Can't do anything. 7) John returns after being away 10 days. Water has been cleaned up by then, and air conditioner fixed. Replaces UPS. Switches the BrainTalk Server over to another redundant internal power supply. 8) John rebuilds corrupted data. Prays to the Patron Saint of Servers and hits the reboot button. Server comes back up. Anyway, that's it. I'm really sorry for the downtime. There was nothing I could do remotely, and I don't have anyone here at MGH who could have fixed this problem (it was a bit more complicated than just "reboot the server" kind of stuff.) At least this story has a happy ending. Take care, -John * * * so... relax everyone... John's back... and so is our beloved MGH Forums! cheers ... murray * * * eMail: Murray Charters <[log in to unmask]> Home page: Parkinson's Resources on the WWWeb http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters/ Newest Page: Parkinson's and Fifty-Nine Years of "eTechnology" http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters/038.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn