http://www.forwardlook.net The Forward Look Network - News and Announcements http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=80232 Hi All, our ISP is changing us over to fiber late in the evening on June 18th. The site may be down temporarily during this time.

We'll be getting a pretty nice speed increase, which is a bonus.
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=79928 Hi, all. Sorry about the ad spam. Google went a little nuts when I started moving some things around. I got it turned off.]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=77233 Please take a moment to verify/update your email address in the control panel. We have been seeing a lot of bounces recently on PM and subscription notifications, so that will help you keep current.
It's also helpful if you ever need a password reset.
Thanks,
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=76574 I believe the links on the eBay tab are now fixed... Please let me know if they're still directing you to a generic page. Sorry about that.]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=75806 Hi, All. Please make sure to go into your Control Panel and make sure your password is up-to-date. The recover password function won't work without the correct email address.
Also, if you are having issues logging in, joining, or resetting a password and you just can't get it to work. Please email to webmaster -<(at)>- forwardlook -<(dot)>- net for further assistance.]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=72029 Hi All,
We have a new firewall to be able to better handle the traffic. It's the same brand, so it should be pretty seamless, but please let me know if there are any issues.
Thanks!
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=70891 Hi All,
After a recent power outage, the forums server came up thinking it was December, 2019. That's been fixed, but apparently as a result there have been reports about an inability to post with an error message about flooding. I have reset the application and rebooted to try and get things back in check. If you are still having an issue, please feel free to drop me an email at dave -dott- stragand -att- forwardlook -dott- net and let me know.
Thanks,
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=62074 Hi All,
We have doubled our connection speed again, which necessitated a new firewall to be able to handle the speed. Please let me know if there are any issues.
Thanks!
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=61703 Hi All,
I'm finally gettting around to some long-overdue upgrades & migrations. Most are transparent, but some I will need to take the server down to accomplish. One will be this evening, probably around 10:30 Eastern time. The server may be down for up to a half hour if thing go right. (If they don't go right, of course, all bets are off on the downtime guess). =)
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=61676 Hi All,
Long time board members Rebels-59 Coronet (Clive) and Wizard (Sven) have volunteered to help DesotoHead (Hank) by taking on additional moderation duties as board moderators. Thanks Sven & Clive for your help!!!
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=58891 Hi All,
I will be moving all of the new equipment into place in our server rack tonight. I anticipate we could be down for a couple of hours as it involves both the 'live' equipment and the 'backup' equipment.
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=58547 I think we may be stabilized on some backup hardware for now.
For those of you interested in the forensics of all this, here's what went down.
The UPS (redundant power supply) blew out literally as I was boarding a plane out of town on 7/22. The normal workaround for that would be to cut over to the redundant equipment, but I was in the middle of replacing it with what will be the new main server and was therefore unable.
Cut the UPS out of the loop, but the main ESXi server had the boot flash blown out from the power spike. Got that corrected and booted on 7/26 and we had basic services restored.
As y'all probably experienced, what remained up & running was a slow, unpredictable mess -- nothing worked right as a whole, but everything was passing individual tests with no problem. This kept me up all night for the whole week (not kidding when I say I haven't had more than 1-2 hours sleep for over a week)
Aside from the damaged hardware, what appeared to cause the funkiness was that the Trusted Root Cert from the Forward Look C.A. expired while the server was powered down, so it had no chance to auto-renew (it's a @#$@!#$ 10-year cert so what are the chances that it would happen to be down on that particular day??? Ugh.). Even once the TRC was renewed, the two DCs were both having trouble with expiring Kerberos tickets even after resetting their machine accounts. Once that was resolved, the firewall could only intermittently contact the DCs. So where did the problem lie? The firewall, the two switches, the VMware server, or the DC VMs? Spinning up the backup DC VMs was no luck. VMotioning to the other VMware server was no luck, and swapping out the switches had no effect either. That left the firewall, so I spun up the latest VM copy, but still no luck (still the Kerberos ticket issue?). While running on that, I reverted to a backup on the firewall and cut back over -- and still no luck. The only component not fully swapped out was the firewall hardware, so I configured an old Juniper and swapped that into place and presto -- we're up & running on a piece of hardware I almost threw out last month.
So I have to either rebuild or replace the Firewall as well. Been an expensive month -- had to add a new UPS in addition to the new server -- and still may need to replace the firewall. I think we now have the luxury of time again to get the rest sorted. Please let me know in the 'Help' section if there are any severe problems. I will try to post warnings of any known down time, but it should be minimal.
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=58511 Hi All,
Still having problems with the servers. We may be up & down at times in the evenings for a while.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
-Dave]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=58435 I mean, seriously. I just decomissioned the old reundant server. I was minutes away from completing hooking up the new redundant server, but I had to catch my plane out of town. It died (quite literally) as soon as I sat down in the plane, and it's a failure that couldn't be worked around without the redundant server -- until I return home from several cities on the west coast...
That's it in a nutshell. Welcome back, all!!]]> http://www.forwardlook.net/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=55516
Sorry for the outage this evening. Windy country road + ice + truck + utility pole = out of business for a while. :(

All should be back up & running at this time.

-Dave]]>