Reasons for Downtime

March 4, 2004 9:29 AM

Hey, just curious if the reason this site tends to have downtime with relative frequency (it's not terrible or anything, but it's certainly more than any other popular site I check out) is a result of the ISP it's hosted at, or the server it's running on...

I'm not asking to be a jerk or anything, I'm just curious, since I have a 1u server colocated somewhere myself, and am moving it to a new facility soon etc.. so network / hosting / downtime issues pique my interest...
posted by twiggy to uptime at 9:29 AM (7 comments total)

I don't know if it's related, but yesterday and today I keep getting a crude, great white shark of a MeFi front page, gaping jaws agog with the relish of so much nothingness, where only the bloody Google ads can be seen. Sometimes I can briskly refresh it back into the calm, blue ocean we know and love - but, most often, not.

Apologies for over-egging. The constant "Enable Robust Exception" error messages made me do it!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 11:25 AM on March 4, 2004

Metafilter isn't hosted at an ISP; it sits on a computer in this guy's closet and shares a T1 line to which he has access.

Judging by this thread, moving MetaFilter to professional hosting could cost hundreds of dollars per month.
posted by timeistight at 11:51 AM on March 4, 2004

There are definitely some software/hardware issues I'm working on now. I'm hoping a major upgrade set to take place in the next day or two will alleviate the problems of the past couple weeks.
posted by mathowie at 12:26 PM on March 4, 2004

"...major upgrade...?" Major enough that we could pass the hat?
posted by majick at 2:16 PM on March 4, 2004

I quadrupled the RAM (1Gb of bad ram was replaced with 4Gb of new RAM), but I'm still testing out remote reboots, so the site might be up and down for the next hour or so.
posted by mathowie at 4:07 PM on March 4, 2004

The PC Weasel is a very cool remote management device for PCs .. in case your looking. Basically runs a seperate OS on the serial port so its possible to access the PC BIOS screen remotely.
posted by stbalbach at 5:22 PM on March 4, 2004

Wow, Matt - it seems to be flying now! Not to jinx it or anything...

But, as I said, wow!
posted by MiguelCardoso at 2:05 AM on March 5, 2004