message on ZNet:



"Hello to ZNET's Users,

 

I don’t quite know how to write this message, I can barely fathom it myself, so I will simply relay the facts as I currently know them.

 

We have an internet provider out in Washington State. They are very congenial and nice people who have worked very hard for us during the lifetime of our operations. They report being very hard hit by yesterday’s virus attack. They report that of 200 machines in one of their buildings, ZNet’s was by far the hardest hit, they think because of its very high use level at the time. The technicians have been unable to get our machine back on line, even to get it to boot up, even to get it to allow any functionality at all. They have prepared a new server for our operations, but when they tried to insert the old hard drive and read the data from our prior hard drive onto the new server, (thousands upon thousands of files), they were unable to do so. Without getting technical, at the moment they simply cannot access the data from our old drive or even see it, and don't really know, in fact, whether the data is intact or not.

 

You might wonder, why worry? Why not just restore your backup data to the new server, and if you lose a day or two days of data that wasn’t backed up, and if it takes another day or so for the provider to get operations fully up to speed,  that’s all very annoying, of course, but it's certainly not a catastrophe. Just get back online as soon as you can, and then reconstruct from there. Hundreds of thousands of users who have been accessing ZNet from all over the world, particularly in this difficult time, are waiting to regain access.

 

Well, that’s our attitude as well, and it would be our agenda except that our provider reports that they have no backup of our data.

 

If you find this last fact incredible, so do I. But that’s the condition they report to us. I can't answer how it could be, I don't know. But the conclusion is that at the moment I don’t know when we will be back online – and that’s assuming they can access the old data at all – much less if they cannot access it. We could be back online with no losses tomorrow. It could be a week including huge losses of content, loss of our sustainer and other databases, etc.

 

PLEASE do not write to tell me you commiserate or to suggest options. I know you do… but I can’t handle the mail. I will continue to send materials by email to our free update list, at least during this crisis, particularly since I can’t place the materials on line. Hopefully we will get the data and be back shortly. If you are not on the list and want to be, use the little form below.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Michael Albert

for ZNet"