MySQL Server Crash Brings Down Omnis

In a post on the Omnis Networks (omnis.com) user support forum Saturday night, a system administrator for the California-based Web hosting provider confirmed that a multiple hard drive failure caused its MySQL server to crash, reportedly causing a failure that brought down the Web sites of a significant number of Omnis customers.

Starting on Sunday morning, several posts were made on the company's user support forums by angry customers who were unable to access email and saw their sites go offline for several hours.

In another post on Sunday afternoon from the same network administrator, an outage of the company's main Web site was explained as the result of a power failure related to a storm in the area. The two issues were not related.

The strongest reaction, however, came from customers who said Omnis Networks had failed to provide customers with adequate database backups. According to several customer posts, after the MySQL Server crash, Omnis was only able to restore the database back to the last complete backup, which took place over a month ago. The situation was summed up in a post that said "Anyone using the MySQL Server has lost everything after November 2. Any sites that are database driven will have lost all their content for a month."

On Monday, Omnis Networks sent an email to its customers elaborating on the reasons for the failure:

"We experienced a failure of the RAID storage system in the new MySQL server that went online in November. The RAID is a redundant array of discs used to house the data for your MySQL database."

The note went on to explain the lack of a recent database backup, which was caused by a system glitch.

"Ordinarily recovery from this type of failure would be simply a matter of restoring data from our daily backups onto a new RAID. However, because of another glitch in the system that takes daily dumps from the MySQL server the most recent backup we have of your database is from November 2, 2004. We have restored the data to your MySQL database from the November 2nd backup. If you enabled MySQL or created your database structure after November 2nd, you will need to recreate your tables."

Omnis also updated its customers on the progress of its repairs.

"We have repaired the bug preventing the database dumps and will be repairing the RAID in the MySQL server."

Omnis Network guarantees 99.9 percent uptime. According to the company's Web site, "it uses a tape backup array to protect your files and ours for recovery from catastrophic hardware failure."

In its email to customers, Omnis Networks extended its apologies. The company has also reportedly offered a $50 credit to its customers as compensation.

A telephone message left with Omnis Networks by the Web Host Industry Review was not immediately returned.

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