[aklap]

It appears that many of us paid for reliability the last time...that we have not gotten. How can we be sure about the next time?

Update: April 24, 2005

There were some delays in manufacturing with Apple, and I've been on the phone with them every day this week. But finally...

the new server is being shipped overnight tomorrow! That means BrainTalk will be back online within a few days...woop!

While waiting this week for the new server, I've been trying to get the old server running and figure out what happened. I've spent many hours taking it apart, running diagnostics, etc. It's incredibly frustrating since there are many intermittent problems with different parts of hardware (motherboard, drive controller, etc.). Usually it's simple to figure out what happened when a system crashes like this. Usually. But not this time. I'm still thinking that a bunch of things got fried internally, most likely caused by a power supply surge. But the power supply checks out as healthy. And the server was connected to a UPS that carefully controls power to the server. So frustrating.

Once the new server arrives in a couple days I will focus on getting BrainTalk restored on this new hardware.

To everyone who sent in donations, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I recently checked the PayPal status and all the checks I received in the mail, and I received a total of $12,000 in donations to BrainTalk Communities, Inc. I was blown away, and I cannot thank you all enough. I received donations from 300 different people. It's going to take me a few days to send you all thank-you notes, but I want to thank each of you personally for helping.

So, where's the money going? Well, my initial replacement server configuration cost $5,000. Since I suddenly had a "windfall" of funds, I decided to spend a little more to increase reliability and redundancy. I have added a few things to my order:

OSX Server Software maintenance (3 years worth of OSX Server Software updates) ($1,000)
Hardware RAID PCI card (this will allow me to set up a hardware-controlled RAID...the "holy grail" of reliability!) ($500)
Spare Drives for the RAID (this will allow me to quickly "swap out" any drives that fail in the RAID, with zero-downtime) ($800)
AppleCare Premium Service and Support Plan (this basically extends the basic 1-year warranty to 3 years, and Apple will physically send a technician here to fix anything that goes wrong in that 3-year period) ($1000) note, my existing server was just over 1 year old, which is why it was not covered by the warranty
So, with overnight priority shipping and all, the bill tops off at $9,000. I'm going to take the additional $3,000 I received in donations and save that for any future hardware upgrades that I will inevitably need in the future.

I can't thank you all enough for helping out. With these additional funds, I think I can guarantee that this kind of server downtime will never happen again, and I have some funds in the bank to help out in case of emergencies (no more last-minute scrambling to raise money). I now have on-site technical support and a guarantee from Apple to ensure that the server will be healthy and the operating system updated for 3 years. This is simply...wonderful.

Thank you all again. I'm very sorry for the downtime, but BrainTalk will be back and more reliable than EVER before in a few more days. Thank you for your patience. I'm doing my best to ensure that BrainTalk will be around for the long-haul, and I'm dedicated to providing it as a place for people to find support and compassion whenever they need it.

Take care,
-John Lester

[ZombieSlayer]

The last crash was due to outdated hardware and software not being able to keep up with BT's rapid growth.

This crash was faulty software and bad timing (since Mr. Lester was away for business) and as far as I know Mac is replacing the OS software altogether (this isn't the only forums that crashed using this version of MAC OS).