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from the how-long-would-it-take-for-YOU-to-restore-a-backup? dept.
Link bookmarking service Instapaper came back online today following a critical database issue that forced it offline for 31 hours over the past two days. According to two blog posts [1, 2] detailing what happened, on February 8, 2016, at around 21:00 GMT, Instapaper's main database mindbogglingly filled up without anyone noticing, and stopped allowing users to save new links to their accounts.
Instapaper developers said that neither its staff or its cloud provider noticed that the database was nearing full capacity, so nobody took precautions to migrate the Instapaper database to a larger server beforehand. When it happened, the service was left with one option, and that was to export all Instapaper content and move it to a new server. Both operations were extremely slow, as most database migration processes generally are.
Instapaper came back online earlier today, on February 10, 2017, at around 3:00 GMT, after a massive and embarrassing 31-hour downtime. Nonetheless, the service isn't 100% yet. Instapaper staff says they only imported a small fraction of the user data into the new database. "In the interest of coming back up as soon as possible, this [database] instance only has the last six weeks of articles," Instapaper staff wrote. "For now, anything you've saved since December 20, 2016 is accessible."
The service expects to restore all data by February 17, next week, a whopping nine days after service went down.
(Score: 3, Funny) by dyingtolive on Monday February 13 2017, @03:40PM
I mean, link bookmarking just isn't where it will be 10 years from now. My, what a golden age that shall be. I hear about some of the developments that they've almost got nailed down. Someone was talking about being able to share link bookmarks, like, between computers! How cool would that be?! So ease off, and give them some time. It's not a venerable and time-tested tech like IE explorer toolbars, RAMBUS, and that little CueCat thing.
Just saying, it could have happened to anyone in the explosive and bleeding-edge link bookmarking sector. Some people call for oversight, and to reign in these "maverick" link bookmarking companies, but I think it'll sort itself out given enough time as long as people just vote with their wallet. There's going to be bumps in the road along the way, and this is just one of them.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!