What to do when your Server goes down?

60 Seconds

I'm loving the triple fix of eCommerce, Social Networking, & Crowdsourcing i'm getting through my latest internet startup springleap.com. It's an Internet software platform matching designer talent with companies that are looking for those skills.

Of course, I'm using all my skills from setting up South African's largest Search Marketing & Affiliate Marketing companies to get large numbers of people to know about springleap.

You can find me up till all hours of the morning messing around with SEO, PPC, affiliate marketing, and social media.

If you want to chat, get in touch!

What to do when your Server goes down?

January 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments

At 6.50 this morning I was alerted that our server which hosts springleap.com was done. For just over 2 hours, we worked flat out to get it up as quickly as possible, and by 9am, it was live again.

These are the lessons I learned:

1. Know who is responsible in your company for the server.

There should be a primary person and secondary people, and everyone should know who they are. I was emailed by one of the team to say they thought there was a problem. The primary person should have been emailed, and if necessary, sms’d and called immediately. It would have allowed the problem to have been resolved even quicker.

2. Know the details of your server

The primary person and the secondary people should have the information of your server log in, who your host is, which server you are using. This information should be easily accessible - both on your primary and secondary contacts computers and a hard copy in case you can’t get into your computer.

3. Know the details of your host

If something goes wrong, how do you contact your hosting company? Via email, web based forms, telephone, skype etc? In our case, our hosting company has an office in South Africa and Germany and many different packages. After a number of precious minutes speaking to South Africa, we found out they can’t help. We tried various numbers in Germany, and they went through to the wrong departments. The quickest method was the online form - once we logged in there, and sent a request, it took 15 minutes for them to find out that some hardware had gone down on our server, they fixed it, and we were back up and running.

4. Backup

We’ve learnt from this lesson that things do go wrong. Hardware fails, software fails, problems occur. We backup regularly, and have been investigating even more powerful backup solutions for springleap. We’ve now realised that backup of both the site, and the data is essential, and should not be forgotten at any stage.

If a problem does occur, and you know who is responsible, what your details are, who you should be contacting, and how you should contact them, problems can be resolved quicker. And don’t kid yourself - problems do happen - be prepared.

Now I need a strong Whisky!!!

Think this article should be read by others?

Tags: springleap

3 responses so far ↓

1 melissa // Jan 14, 2009 at 10:23 am

Brilliant blog Eric. I have learnt a few things.
Thanks,
Mel
2 Louisa // Jan 14, 2009 at 10:37 am

Glad you got it up and running again so quickly. Thanks for the tips.
3 Kat // Jan 14, 2009 at 10:52 am

Great way to get some value out of an unpleasant experience. On a more personal level my laptop was stolen recently so I can only agree with the last point in any situation. Backup backup backup!

Must Reads

My Current Venture

Lets Talk Tech

Know anyone here?

60 Seconds

What to do when your Server goes down?

January 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments

3 responses so far ↓

Leave a Comment

Related Posts from the Past:

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

35 years spotlight

Must Reads

My Current Venture

Lets Talk Tech

Know anyone here?

60 Seconds

What to do when your Server goes down?

January 14th, 2009 · 3 Comments

3 responses so far ↓

Leave a Comment

Related Posts from the Past:

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

35 years spotlight

Tags