JENKINTOWN, Pennsylvania (GBT) — The Genealogy By Tim G. web server is back online after a two-week outage. The cause of the outage was determined to be a faulty power supply. This has been the longest outage in the history of the service, which was launched in the Summer of 2020.
The Genealogy By Tim G. web server hosts a number of other services, including MathTeachReacts.org and its flagship Minecraft server, KrystalKierodPhD.com, TGraham3.org, and instance of the NextCloud cloud hosting platform. All of these services were affected by the outage, which was firts observed on the morning of March 10th.
"I was actually preparing for a job interview when I noticed the outage," recalled Tim G., who maintains the server. "I wanted to share what I've been working on with the interviewer, but that unfortunately never happened." Efforts to restore power to the server later that evening were to no avail.
"Krystal and I both tried pressing the power button in a variety of ways. We double pressed it. We long pressed it. We kept looking for that blue power light, but there was nothing," Tim said.
Improvements to the server were implemented during the downtime.
"I wasn't sure what was wrong with it. I suspected that it could be the power supply, but it could have been something else in the server's hardware. If I had simply bought the power supply, that could have worked, but if it didn't work there would have been further delays. I decided to go all in and buy a second server."
Genealogy By Tim G.'s web site was originally hosted on two identical HP Compaq nc6230 notebook computers. One of those computers was the website's daily driver while the other was held in reserve as a backup and test machine. The HP Compaqs were replaced by a single Hunsn FMC-BM14 fanless Mini-PC in March of 2023, amid concerns of the impending obsolescence of the nc6230's 32-bit processor.
"I bought only the one machine at the time because I was trying to stay within a budget, but I always wanted the second machine," Tim said. "When the server went out last Monday, I decided on buying the second server. In the worst case scenario, the old Hunsn server was dead, and the new server would replace it. In the best case scenario, the power supply for the new server will power the old server. Then all I'll need is another new power supply for the new servers, and I'll have two functional servers."
Tim said that the waiting was the hardest part. "I bought the new server from Amazon.com, Tim said. "I was relieved that they still had the same exact model for sale, two years after I bought the first. I'd rather the two servers be identical so that the parts are interchangeable. I tracked the package through Amazon. As early as Monday, March 17th, the site was reporting that the machine was 'out for delivery' and 'expected to arrive today'. It said that for several days. I thought for sure there was some kind of backup. I didn't know when it would arrive, if ever, but the package did finally arrive on Tuesday, March 25th, which was the last day of the delivery window. I was so relieved again."
The new power supply immediately powered the older Hunsn server, and it it was put back into production on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 25th. An additional RAM dimm, SATA solid state hard drive, and another power supply will soon be purchased to bring the second server online.
"I took advantage of the downtime to clone the old server's hard drive," Tim said. "That was crucial. That needed to be done. I actually had no backup of that, if you can believe it. One of the first things I plan to do with the new server is experiment with a variety of system backup and restoration software packages. It's one aspect of server administration that still I know very little about, but it's profoundly important to learn, as this little episode demonstrates." ⬮
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