Today when I went to check this blog at about 3:30pm PST I figured out that it took very long for it to respond and it can’t connect to the database. I then checked other websites but also the same. Later on I figured out that’s because steadfast’s mysql2 database server was down as their hard drive screwed up :(. I checked their website and they said they replaced the hard drive, but they needed filesystem check as well. I waited and waited for a few hours but at 7:55PM CT they said the filesystem check process restarted and I have to wait again. I kept on checking their update about the problem and at 9:45pm they said the filesystem check is completed and some data are corrupted, but they have the backup from the morning. I then checked my website and it worked for a like a minute or so but down again. Later on I checked their update again and realized that the good news is gone; instead they replaced it with a bad news in 10:00pm saying that the RAID card screwed up and they’ll look at it. An hour and a half later the bad news came, that the whole RAID array is gone and they had to replace the whole thing! After another hour wait they said they are installing the system back to the new drives and finally at 1:13 AM they are up again, and they restored the backup that was taken at 1:30AM CT on October 21, ahhhh. Fortunately nothing was changed on my websites at that time of period.
I have never had any issue with this hosting company before. My websites were almost never down until yesterday, but this time it is been down for too long. It was down for more than six hours. On all other hosting companies that I have before they have downtime as well, but only for a very short time rather than this lengthy delay. However, this issue is not common and I hope that this won’t happen again.