You can almost hear the pre-pubescent giggles of Aston Kutcher from a nearby spot as he films a new episode of Punk’d. Well, not exactly in this case. This past Thursday a “Zombie Attack” disaster recovery plan was found on the University of Florida’s website.
From the NY Times:
The University of Florida’s response plans for a zombie apocalypse are no longer available for public consumption.
UF spokesman Steve Orlando said Friday the university removed a link to a disaster recovery exercise, which detailed how the school could respond to an outbreak of the undead. The link was taken down late Thursday afternoon.
Orlando says officials felt the joke ”didn’t really belong” on the site, which also included plans for dealing with hurricanes and pandemics.
Well, the goofiness may not have belonged on their site. We certainly believe that it belongs on ours.
You can find a copy of the zombie response here. (.pdf)
Enjoy!
Back from the dead. Miss me? HA! Riiight.
While I was in the clutches of a evil flu bug this week I lay there pondering my personal DRP. What would happen if I were to punch out right now? Dramatic and dark I know but, humour me for a moment. We spend our workaday grinding away building resilient systems and programs that should withstand the single bus problem. By which I mean, if you were to step in front of a bus; problem.
Now, for a moment, imagine that light switch that is your life had just gone “click”. What would happen to your “mental projection of your digital self”? Matrix quotes notwithstanding think of all the passwords and all the applications that you have have, such as email. Who would be able to access it? Would you even want people to access your computer due to your Muppets fetish? Would you want your friends and family to see your data?
More importantly, would you have your house in order? Seriously, have you got a will written up? A dark thought at first blush but, it’s meant more for a wake up call. How would your family be able to weather the storm of your ($deity forbid) sudden demise?
We build systems with DRP and BCP in mind but, do we do the same in our daily lives?
A lot of doctors smoke. Something to ponder.
The dust has cleared. The Gmailageddon now subsiding I emerged from the bunker to do battle with potential zombie hordes…and search for any survivors.
The madness of the great Gmail meltdown of ‘09 (again) had the tubes of the internet all a flutter this morning. Seriously though, why is it such a big deal? Are folks so dependent on Gmail that when it crashes life stops?
If so, wtf?
But, amid the mayhem and carnage of the morning there was an interesting piece that popped up on TechCrunch. Apparently, some ne’er do wells managed to create a group that used background noise to spread porn Google groups in the midst of the carnage of the blue screened clouds.
Google’s response to the outage?
If you’ve tried to access your Gmail account today, you are probably aware by now that we’re having some problems. Shortly after 10 9:30am GMT our monitoring systems alerted us that Gmail consumer and businesses accounts worldwide could not get access to their email.
We’re working very hard to solve the problem and we’re really sorry for the inconvenience. Those users in the US and UK who have enabled Gmail offline through Gmail Labs should be able to access their inbox, although they won’t be able to send or receive emails.
We’re posting updates to the Gmail Help Centre at http://mail.google.com/support/ and Google Apps users can visit the Google Apps help centre at www.google.com/support/a.
Thanks for bearing with us while we sort this out. We’ll report back as we make progress.
Posted by Acacio Cruz, Gmail Site Reliability Manager
So, with all the talk of cloud computing, what happened with Gmail (and other services) yet again?
Another typo?
Is it raining?
Well, yesterday was certainly an adventure. Our main database cluster for Liquidmatrix went down hard.
From our support crew:
We’re currently experiencing problems with the cluster affecting web, database and mail services. The file server is being worked on, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience
Since then it has been resolved. Back up after a 5 hour outage. Ugh.
So, there it is in a nutshell. Thanks for everyone who wrote in. Thank (insert deity) for good backups. We are still here and the support folks have us back up and running!
The fun and games that is the missing White House email story is ramping up. A federal judge has now issued an order for the WH to prepare a discovery.
Where’s my popcorn? This is getting good.
From Computer World:
District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly this week issued an order enabling the Washington-based Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics watchdog group to perform limited questioning of White House officials. The group last May had filed suit against the White House Office of Administration seeking access to White House e-mail under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The nonprofit group had been seeking White House e-mail documents related to various controversial issues, including the release of the identity of a former CIA operative, the reasons for launching the war in Iraq and actions by the U.S. Department of Justice. The White House has contended that the e-mail requested by the group has been lost.
Kollar-Kotelly ordered the discovery to determine whether the Office of Administration is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The office contends it is not subject to FOI requests.
Not subject to…? OK, if they cover their eyes and say “lalalala, I can’t see you” that will not make this problem go away.
Tags: White House Email, Missing White House Emails, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly
Not being a Blackberry user (strictly by happenstance, I’d love to have one) I missed the outage that occurred on Monday. This is not the first time there has been a large scale Blackberry outage. Almost a year ago the RIM network suffered a significant outage leaving a large swath of customers in the dark. Regarding Monday’s outage,
From Tech World:
“RIM is continuing to investigate the exact cause” of the outage, the company said in a statement Tuesday. Late Monday it apologised for any inconvenience caused by the incident, which left customers throughout North America without current email for about three hours starting around 3:30 pm Eastern Time.
It was the second major outage in less than a year for the popular mobile data service, on which about 12 million subscribers depended at the beginning of last December. The previous problem, which occurred last April, was caused by a minor software upgrade that went awry, followed by a failed switchover to a backup system, according to RIM. The company said soon afterwards that it had identified “certain aspects of its testing, monitoring and recovery processes that will be enhanced” as a result of the failure.
I hope that the RIM crew are having a better day today.
Tags: RIM, Blackberry Outage, Blackberry Network Collapse
OK, so once is an accident. Twice a coincidence but, a third time in as many days? I find this one a little too convenient.
From the Globe and Mail:
Bandwidth providers in India said they were working to restore service to about 80 per cent of its usual speed Friday.
Many companies said their Internet access already had gotten better.
“We’ve been getting and sending e-mails normally. Compared to yesterday connectivity is certainly improved,” said Praveen Mathur of Streit India Advisory Services Pvt. Ltd., an New Delhi-based investment consulting firm with clients in the United States and Canada.
Rajesh Chharia, president of India’s Internet Service Provider’s Association, said access improved as service providers rerouted traffic across the Pacific.
In Egypt, Internet access remained sporadic or nonexistent Friday, the first day of the official Muslim weekend in the Middle East when all government offices and most businesses are closed. Egyptian Minister of Communications and Information Technology Tarek Kamil said service would be up to about 80 per cent of its usual capacity within 48 hours.
Not a conspiracy theory so, you can dispel that one. I just find it a remarkable coincidence that three undersea cables got nailed in a week.
I’m just saying.
Tags: Undersea Cable, Third Undersea Cable, No Internet Access, Internet Outage
You wake up. Roll out of bed and wander to the coffee machine. Bleary eyed you sit down to check your Charter Communications email only to find that your account is gone.
Ouch.
From the AP:
Charter Communications officials believe a software error during routine maintenance caused the company to delete the contents of 14,000 customer e-mail accounts.
There is no way to retrieve the messages, photos and other attachments that were erased from inboxes and archive folders across the country on Monday, said Anita Lamont, a spokeswoman for the suburban St. Louis-based company.
“We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologize to all those folks who were affected by the error,” Lamont said Thursday when the company announced the gaff.
Charter, one of the nation’s largest cable TV operators, also provides telephone and high-speed Internet service. It has applied a $50 credit to the bill of each customer whose account was affected by the mistake, Lamont said.
A $50 credit? So, hold on a tick. They have no backups?
Tags: Charter Communications, Charter Cable Email Deleted, Charter Email Deleted
After checking the emails this morning I noticed quite a few people trying to find information on how to recover their deleted blog entries.
Interesting.
Well, one of the ways to accomplish this is to make sure you maintain a solid backup schedule for your blog database. That of course is assuming that you are in fact the one running it. Another method, simplistic as it might seem, is to maintain a copy of each entry that you post. Copy and paste a copy into a document that you store offline or similar fashion. The key being that you would want to be able to restore it in the event that your shiny new MacBook Air (for example) took a tumble down the stairs.
There are tools available that will help smooth the process of making backups. A handy plugin for Wordpress written by Scott Merrill and now maintained here (link: http://www.ilfilosofo.com/blog/wp-db-backup/). Also there are step by step instructions for going through the restore process as found here. Bearing in mind I’m only pointing to Wordpress related articles. You can find the information pertaining to your own blog database restore with a quick Google search.
Of course all of this is based on the idea of proper planning and having good recovery procedures. Think of it as I do my morning coffee. You need it to survive. Sadly, there is little to be done in the case of “Oops I deleted everything and I have no backups”. Well, in that case you’re pretty much screwed.
Tags: Wordpress Database, Recover Blog Entries, Blog Backups
Morning folks. Sorry for being a low poster yesterday. As you might infer from the graphic above I’m under the weather. Last week while I was in the studio with the band I play for, I picked up this bug. I should have been more careful when I noticed that our guitar player was sniffling away. Of course being a cordial fellow I shook hands with the guys when I arrived. One thing that I would normally keep in the car is a travel sized hand sanitizer. It’s just a good habit to get into especially during this time of year. Of course mine ran out and “I’ll get some later” kept replaying in my lobe. Get some and carry it with you. If you haven’t already, make sure you are getting your vitamin C. It’s a preventative measure but, be sure to consult a physician for medical advice as I am most assuredly not one. I hope to get some postings up today once the meds begin coursing though my blood stream.
