Well, okay then. It’s been an interesting few weeks. A few more database errors cropped up today but have been repaired. I’m not sure what the root cause of the problem is yet. I do know that last week, when the HC Multi stores were loading so slowly, I upped the amount of memory the server could access in RAM. I never changed it back and I’m hoping that is what’s causing the database errors. It is switched back now and hopefully that fixes the issue.
If it’s any consolation (and I’m pretty sure it’s not really 😉 ), I just finished reading The Perfect Store about how eBay got started and eBay used to spend a good portion of it’s time crashed out and being restarted. In fact, even after it was fairly well established, it had an outage of almost 24 hours. At least we haven’t gotten that bad yet. I will continue monitoring the situation and diagnosing the cause of these errors.
Also, this question has come up so I want to address it here: the databases are, in fact, backed up daily, so you won’t lose more than a day’s work at any given time. That didn’t help yesterday as the listings were made and lost before the backup, but at least you don’t have to worry about losing everything.
Finally, I had mentioned yesterday that I would be doing database work on the HC Multi stores. I’m going to hold off on that for a few days and just leave everything be, without changing anything, so we can get a good idea of how the server’s holding up. I’ll be sure to give you at least 24 hours notice before the downtime.
Thanks for bearing with me everyone. I appreciate your patience and understanding!