Outage

[Russethouse]

Without blinding you all with science, and because I am not technical, I can tell you that there was a problem of about 80 minutes duration this morning.

Apparently despite back up systems, some posts have unfortunately been lost.

It may also be necessary to for the forum to be offline for a while this evening too.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

[Tresco]

Thanks for letting us know Gay, but I must ask, is OUTAGE a real word???

[Will]

When I was involved with power generation about 15 years ago 'outage' was in common use for a power station going off-line, but I haven't heard the word since (until today).

For the techies, according to Archant's IS people,
"This was due to a failure of two SQL Server databases following a currently unknown problem with the server’s attached 1Tb disk array in the early hours of this morning. As these failures were un-repairable we were forced to restore two key databases (membership and forums) from yesterday’s final set of backups, meaning that we’ve effectively lost any new posts or member signups that occurred between approximately 11pm last night and 6am this morning.
This is because although the databases were backed up between 11pm and 6am we were unable to restore from those backups as the problems with the disk array occurred at an unknown point after 11pm. Consequently the 11pm backup represented the last consistent & known good backup of the data. The database server will need to be taken offline again later tonight to run further disk checks and array diagnostics to try and establish exactly what caused this failure to occur."

[JohnM]

I heard (and used) Outage when I was in Computing and always assumed that it was a proper word, but knowing what IT is like for using American "made up" words, I've just checked the Online Oxford English Dictionary and found

outage

  • noun a period when a power supply or other service is not available.

So yep. It's a word (which, of course, "yep" isn't!)

 

[Furry Knickers]

I think you will find that outage is when a gay bloke or woman decides to come out of the wardrobe!

Does any of yous remember that lad that used to be in the wardrobe in them adverts for a Bank? it was a good few years ago, and the woman would just go and get the lad out of the wardrobe when ever she needed a few quid. It would be great if we could do that in real life too. I think it is only women though that can do things like that.

[Clarkkent]

Outage

I heard some person in a recent radio programme explain that "outage" was used when there is an unplanned break in service (breakdown etc) and "power cut" is used when the break in service is planned (maintenance, equipment renewal etc).