Jul 232004
 

Tonight we had a small problem with one of our RAID arrays at work. A drive in the array had failed, but every time the array rebuilt, it marked itself failed again. The entire process took around an hour and was constantly occurring. It took a few minutes to solve the problem; we ended up moving around 80 GB of data from one volume to another. In the end, it looks like two drives in the array actually failed. A RAID array can easily survive one drive failure; two drive failures generally leads to the loss of your data.

The problem wasn’t really that difficult to solve. It was just a matter of going through all of the correct steps to solve the problem. We didn’t even have a loss of functionality to our customers. The problem I had is that it got me a bit wired.

I first started working on the problem today between 7:30 and 8 pm, just as I was going to leave work. Unfortunately, the problem took several hours to solve, and I didn’t end up leaving work until 11:30 pm. I walked around midtown for a few blocks, but I remained wired. I took a taxi home and talked with a couple of friends at a local bar, Cafe Steinhof for a bit. I didn’t have anything to drink, because I hadn’t really had a substantial dinner. I didn’t have anything to eat, because I don’t want to eat just before I went to bed.

I talked with a few friends for a while; I just got back home from the bar five or ten minutes ago. I’m still a bit wired. On the bright side, I think once I hit my bed I’ll actually conk right out.

I have a lot on my plate right now:

  • I wanted to buy moving boxes tonight so I could…
  • Pack up my apartment of seven years this weekend because…
  • Movers are coming to my apartment next Thursday…
  • To get me out of my apartment by the end of the month…
  • Three days before I leave for Athens to cover the Olympics…
  • But not before I have found a contractor to work on my new apartment…
  • So that construction work can be occurring before I return…
  • Direct to DC from Athens to go to a wedding that same night…
  • Then back to NYC for a couple of weeks…
  • Then back to Athens to help pack up the computers…
  • Before I leave for Rome to go on a vacation for two weeks…
  • And stay in hotels that I haven’t picked yet…
  • Making my way to Milan where I will fly back to NYC…
  • And stay in my apartment.
  • Unless it isn’t finished.

I’m going to be wired for the next two months, I think.

 Posted by at 2:00 am

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