My experience Re: Recovery from a crash

["Harriet Zook" <hzook at pacific dot edu>]

We also have had our system crash. 2 this year, on a new system that was
installed the fall of 2004 when we brought up Mil. The first happened
while we were out on Christmas break (library closed). We came back the
day after New Year's and found its demise. We had gotten a full backup
before it crashed so was able to restore everything. However, a couple
of changes that III had done prior to Christmas had to be redone. I
didn't think too much about it. Our latest happened June 13th (of course
while I was on vacation). Once again we had a complete full backup to
restore from, but once again I discovered the changes mentioned
previously were gone. When I questioned why this was so, I was told that
those changes had been done in a part of the system that is not
routinely backed up. I said WHAT! Something was mentioned about changing
a code so that it would be part of our regular back up (albeit it would
take longer to do). I said do it. But I'm not totally sure this has
happened. Later, I mentioned it to someone else at III and they said
that they would be telling someone that this should be backed up. I
would think that III would want the changes they make to the system
backed up so that they don't have repeatingly make the same changes over
again if something happens or have to reconstruct want has been done
before a crash. 

Fortunately, as far as I can tell, we haven't had all the issues
mentioned in original message. But, I would recommend everyone check
into this issue. I will be following up with III after I unbury myself
from everything waiting for me upon my return from vacation. 

>>> boggs at ups dot edu 6/16/2005 5:22:14 PM >>>
Hi,

Now that we are back up and running I wanted to do a summary of our 
experience for the archive.  I know while we were down I was searching
the 
archives to see what others had written, especially trying to find out
how 
long it would take to restore from backup and what if anything didn't 
recover. The good news, I suppose, is that there isn't much in the
archives 
meaning it hasn't happened often or hasn't been a big enough deal to
write 
about.
SNIP--