My zppy repo and my sen-packs repo are both back online! Thanks to Jettaman, our main Developer, at DukeCitySolutions.com for hooking me up with hosting.
I figured I should explain why my server and sites went offline.
Since I found ZPanel (v1.2 I think) Windows only (incomplete at the time) I have been here since day '2' so to speak. (ZPanel/Sentora History) I have had so many home server issues over the years it's incredible. But, this is the first time I had an HDD failure.
What happened you ask?
I maintain my own server from home. As I have done for many years now. Well, the HDD that held the OS died.
I replaced the drive and started re-installing the OS. Simple fix, just time consuming. Well, nothing is that easy for me. During this process the power supply died.
When it rains, it pours...
Jettaman set me up an account on one of his Sentora servers so I could get my sites and clients back online. Well, that wasn't as easy as planned either! We had a php session issue and file permission issues.
Jettaman was able to sort those issues out quickly and my sites are back online!
You may be thinking, TGates uses Sentora and Jettaman uses Sentora, why didn't the sites just 'plug-n-play' on the server? (BTW, my OS was Ubuntu 20.04 and his is also Ubuntu 20.04)
Since the two of us are the only devs, you would think everything would be the same. Nope! His Sentora server is setup to his needs and clients, while mine was setup for my needs and clients. This goes to show how different a Sentora server can be from one install to another.
What to learn from this?
Have a backup plan for hosting, just in case! Even if its temporary while you rebuild your server.
The most important thing: Back up your hostdata folder locally on your own PC or to a different server! Do not rely on the automated Sentora site backups on your server. If the server HDD fails (like mine did), you are pretty much at a loss.
My server had two HDDs, one HDD hosted the OS and Sentora while the second HDD held my hostdata folder. (Information on how to change the hostdata folder location is in our docs.)
Regardless of your server setup, always download or copy the entire hostdata folder some place safe, at minimum weekly. More active clients/sites should be saved daily.
The built in site backup module also saves MySQL database dumps! This is another important reason to download/save your hostdata folder. Sure, you may have the site on your PC because of editing or whatever, but do you also have a recent DB backup?
I hope this information will help other's to setup a game plan 'just in case' to protect your sites or client's sites.
We do have plans to build a Sentora Core backup module. More info on that at another time.
I figured I should explain why my server and sites went offline.
Since I found ZPanel (v1.2 I think) Windows only (incomplete at the time) I have been here since day '2' so to speak. (ZPanel/Sentora History) I have had so many home server issues over the years it's incredible. But, this is the first time I had an HDD failure.
What happened you ask?
I maintain my own server from home. As I have done for many years now. Well, the HDD that held the OS died.
I replaced the drive and started re-installing the OS. Simple fix, just time consuming. Well, nothing is that easy for me. During this process the power supply died.
When it rains, it pours...
Jettaman set me up an account on one of his Sentora servers so I could get my sites and clients back online. Well, that wasn't as easy as planned either! We had a php session issue and file permission issues.
Jettaman was able to sort those issues out quickly and my sites are back online!
You may be thinking, TGates uses Sentora and Jettaman uses Sentora, why didn't the sites just 'plug-n-play' on the server? (BTW, my OS was Ubuntu 20.04 and his is also Ubuntu 20.04)
Since the two of us are the only devs, you would think everything would be the same. Nope! His Sentora server is setup to his needs and clients, while mine was setup for my needs and clients. This goes to show how different a Sentora server can be from one install to another.
What to learn from this?
Have a backup plan for hosting, just in case! Even if its temporary while you rebuild your server.
The most important thing: Back up your hostdata folder locally on your own PC or to a different server! Do not rely on the automated Sentora site backups on your server. If the server HDD fails (like mine did), you are pretty much at a loss.
My server had two HDDs, one HDD hosted the OS and Sentora while the second HDD held my hostdata folder. (Information on how to change the hostdata folder location is in our docs.)
Regardless of your server setup, always download or copy the entire hostdata folder some place safe, at minimum weekly. More active clients/sites should be saved daily.
The built in site backup module also saves MySQL database dumps! This is another important reason to download/save your hostdata folder. Sure, you may have the site on your PC because of editing or whatever, but do you also have a recent DB backup?
I hope this information will help other's to setup a game plan 'just in case' to protect your sites or client's sites.
We do have plans to build a Sentora Core backup module. More info on that at another time.
