TPU Disaster Planning & Recovery

[btarunr]

I think a backup in more than one continent is a good idea.

That and a backup which is NOT connected to the internet.

You mean a DVD.

 

[n-ster]

haha... you know what would be funny? That we somehow back it up on a micro chip, but when we need it, we lose it (because it's so small)

 

[Deleted member 24505]

W1zzard has an attack of temporary insanity and deletes it all.

The russians release a virus on the west which eats all silicon based items.

 

[qubit]

Don't worry

Don't worry about losing data there, W1zz: I've got a dusty 5.25 inch floppy disc around here somewhere you can backup everything. I'll have to retrieve the drive for it, but it's currently squashed under a rather heavy pile of boxes, so gimme a bit. You'll be ok, you'll see.

Also, that tangle of wires looks a bit of a mess, frankly. I'll come over tomorrow and re-plug everything so that they look tidy. Note that the plugs won't be going back in the same sockets to achieve this for you.

 

[crtecha]

This is way too scary to think about but I would say they start up the hadron collider and cause a blackhole that eliminates all. Sorry I dont think theres a plan for that.

 

[alexp999]

You mean a DVD.

I highly doubt a DVD is capable of holding all of TPU

 

[crazy pyro]

A blu-ray disk then, may not be able to hold all the images that have been uploaded though.

 

[WhiteLotus]

You said about the admin all suddenly dying. Who takes control of TPU in your absence?

 

[alexp999]

If W1zz is gone, I dont think he would care too much about TPU

Is there any tape storage for TPU, there must be 100s of GB of stuff to backup.

Maybe a black box system, so in the event of a Nuclear World War three, TPU is still backed up

 

[crazy pyro]

Alex though, they could get rid of some of the useless threads.

 

[alexp999]

Threads take up hardly any space, its all the other stuff on TPU that does.

Like reviews, files, vids, etc.

 

[lemonadesoda]

1. Key person missing (could be temporary, could be permanent).
   
2. Data protection legislation requires YOU to do stuff for members on demand in certain situations. Saying, as is so often said, "this is a private server, etc, we do as we like" is actually not within US law. You could be fined is you dont have appropriate policies in place.
   
3. Illegal content is loaded on to the servers, either in the forums, or on image hosting. Esp. of the picture kind.
   
4. FBI/other agency take all server logs and suspend the system.
   
5. vB hack / database hack means data gets changed/corrupted in some way and this change in not noticed for a long time. Hence regular backup (without appropraite grandfathering) could just propagate the issue.
   
6. Your site gets hacked, or you GPU-z gets hacked, and embedded virus/malware opens you to legal action.
   
7. Data is TAKEN from the forums/database and used by ex-staff or ex-member for other purposes. This exposes you to all sorts of issues, esp. point 2 again.

 

[W1zzard]

they start up the hadron collider and cause a blackhole that eliminates all.

please read up on the subject and check your facts before engaging in a discussion about bad things(tm) that can happen when the lhc is turned on

 

[crtecha]

Sorry I was just mearly exaggerating some of the fears of the Hadron Collider.

Fears about the Brookhaven collider first centered on black holes but soon shifted to the danger posed by weird hypothetical particles, strangelets, that critics said could transform the Earth almost instantly into a dead, dense lump. Ultimately, independent studies by two groups of physicists calculated that the chances of this catastrophe were negligible, based on astronomical evidence and assumptions about the physics of the strangelets. One report put the odds of a strangelet disaster at less than one in 50 million, less than a chance of winning some lottery jackpots. Dr. Kent, in a 2003 paper, used the standard insurance company method to calculate expected losses to explore how stringent this bound on danger was. He multiplied the disaster probability times the cost, in this case the loss of the global population, six billion. A result was that, in actuarial terms, the Rhic collider could kill up to 120 people in a decade of operation.

Original article

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15risk.html

This one speaks about other Colliders also but it was a fear that has been expressed with all of them

 

[DrPepper]

What happens if w1zz dies ?
Solar flare ruins data on the HDD's. Don't know if thats possible.
Fire, Flood etc

 

[h3llb3nd4]

I think everyone is repeating what W1zz has listed abovein different forms....

 

[btarunr]

I highly doubt a DVD is capable of holding all of TPU

Several of them are

You can carry TPU in an envelope.

 

[DrPepper]

Several of them are

Would be easier to grab a sizeable HDD though stick it in a faraday cage so EMP can't affect it.

 

[alexp999]

I still say TPU should be backed up to a black box

 

[crazy pyro]

What exactly would it take to kill a Black box Alex? I think nothing gonna stop TPU from dieing if someone breaks a black box with it on, they'd be trying bloody hard!

 

[qwerty_lesh]

the skynet AI (terminator) becomes selfaware and the Matrix AI also becomes selfaware and have an epic battle on the TPU severs, destroying data in the wake of this epic battle making the sever irrepairable.

sorry can't think of anything serious.

 

[Mussels]

the chinese could take over the world and ban english. we'd be stuffed reading TPU then.

 

[crazy pyro]

Screw the chinese, TPU could become illegal so we could still read it, what'd be worse were if we were forced to put the entire forum in german (I learn it and am NOT using it on a regular basis once my exams are done).

 

[Polaris573]

Having a backup made periodically and sent to a geographically separate location (Perhaps Europe instead of USA), and having a different hosting company chosen to bring that backup live in case something happens to the current hosting company for a sustained period of time. That solves just about any crisis.

Of course the biggest crisis for the website would be if you died. A backup cannot be made of the owner. Look both ways before you cross the street and try not to electrocute yourself when working on your equipment.

 

[leventp]

Wizzard,

As far as I see, all your scenarios are based on hacker attack (deletion) and hardware failure. Please also consider the possibility of a hacker attack without deletion, but password theft.

- Hacker attack, admin and other high-level user passwords stolen
- Hacker attack, user database and passwords comprimised.
... and other variations.

Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps...

Addition: Polaris is also right... Another possible failure is your health. I do not go to extreme and say "death", but if you go seriously ill or need an operation etc.