We have successfully restored the main site from backup, or at least what was there in the backup. So as you either are new to our main-page or you are a frequent visitor, you will notice that alot of our content is missing. Why didn’t we restore from our active live backup? Good question and that answer lies within the very simple fact, as ‘the active live backup failed due to an extra colon, (: sign) in the backup process. Seems that an developer, decided to hit the colon one too many times when exiting the file editor. (Very simple mistake, and everyone has hit an extra key by mistake, it happens)
Now of course, why wasn’t this check? Another great question, that answer is, it should have been. Now, we stand before everything we do, and create at UCANN2, and thus, this little hardware hiccup, has caused a redesign in the developer procedure of ALL software we create from this day forward. Everything we create will be designed, tested, and rolled into a replicated-live environment; much like a test environment, except this environment will have live working and accessible information. Once that is completed, there will be a proven working report of responses, and activity from the application, which then has to be approved by sign off.
We at UCANN2 do not take short cuts, and are completely baffled at how this little character has cause such a tremendous malfunction in the stability and reliability that UCANN2 offers. It is VERY uncommon for a complete server melt down, however on the green colored moon that it does happen, a system restore is in order, when your system restoration process fails due to a type-o which is not checked it can and usually will cause catastrophic damage… see how this can spiral down into an unending cascading effect.
Now the above statements, are meerly and introduction to these next statments. Much like our web-structure failed, and information was lost. Clients, subscribers, developers, designers, and so on, could not get information, or communication that was needed for UCANN2 to operate 100%. This means, that the DNS structure that we provide, was not at 100% operational. Automatic updates could not function. You might be asking yourself, ‘So? What does this one web site have to do with anything?’. UCANN2 operates a DNS registry for the Top Level Domains, that are not added to the Internet Cooperation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Meaning, that any client that has a registry entry within the UCANN2 structure, was unable to update their DNS, or obtain information regarding any outage issues, maintenance plans, etc. Now you might never see this outage, as you connect to your local IP which usually has a cached version of DNS for the length of TTL (time to live) where as you would never know there is a DNS issue, however on a larger scale, the ISP could see this outage and that outage could reflect in a web site not being visible.
The structure we have built, is a three fold system, however much like DNS, there is ALWAYS a single point of failure in any given structure. Either cabling, router, switch, server, and so on. However our structure is built with complete fail-over redundancy, except when the redundancy fails. (This is what occurred)
Our web site, has information to lead individuals to specific points in our well-built structure, however when this information can not be obtain, the structure itself fails. Needless to say, we are now redesigning the complete mechanism by which clients, (old and new) can retrieve this information from the UCANN2 structure.