Here’s what Jim, K8JE, Great Lakes Division Director, had to say on the qrz.com forum about the LoTW outage. I can’t speak for the truth of his “facts”:
“+++ Logbook of the World +++
A few members have asked about Logbook of the World (LoTW) being
inoperable. Here are the facts about this situation:
The department manager over Information Technology at HQ has confirmed
that no data were lost. The problem is that storage capacity has been
filled. Apparently, the fact that storage for LoTW was rapidly being
filled due to the rapid expansion of data input into it was not caught
in time to allow capacity to be expanded before the program shut down.
Staff advised the directors that capacity is being added and that
appropriate alarms are being built into the program to prevent this
situation from happening in the future. LoTW should resume full
operations essentially momentarily.
I apologize for the inconvenience this situation has caused.
73,
Jim
Jim Weaver, K8JE
Director, Great Lakes Division
5065 Bethany Rd.
Mason, OH 45040
Tel. 513-459-1661; e-mail K8JE@nullarrl.org
ARRL: The reason Amateur Radio Is
Members: The reason ARRL is”
Thanks for the update, Pat. [All my following comments are based on the assumption that this information is true.]
This is still pretty lame. Any professionally configured IT installation would have provisions for monitoring storage usage. There are a million utilities out there that can do it. And if you don’t have an automated monitor, you can always take a look manually as part of daily chores. This situation makes one wonder about the robustness of ARRL systems, including the DXCC database.
I wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of this if it WEREN’T such a big deal. This is serious stuff and shows negligence and/or incompetence at the managerial level. Does ARRL have a business continuity program? Does their disaster recovery plan make provision for remote, hot-site recovery? Is it tested at least annually? How is it that the most fundamental of system management processes are not being conducted?
What would happen to the ARRL’s reputation if the DXCC database were irrecoverable? If the league doesn’t have simple alarms set on storage utilization or an effective monitoring process, one can only assume that they have not taken the necessary steps to protect this critical data.
I sent this thoughts onto Bob, W1YRC and K1KI
Jim KS1J
I agree, Jim, this issue raises serious questions about robustness.
I also sent an email to Bob, W1YRC, but for a different reason. I’m concerned about the lack of communication from ARRL leadership to its members and LoTW users about this problem. It indicates that they either do not consider us worthy of being kept informed, or thought that all they had to do was to gloss over the situation with a public-relations standard “we didn’t lose any data so everything is ok.” That any of us should have to learn details of the failure from a qrz.com forum is unacceptable.
Let’s be realistic, it’s just a database of QSOs, and the world won’t end if it was destroyed tomorrow. Most of us have our own database we work from, so re-uploading it to LoTW would be no big deal if it came to that (I’m not saying it would be right, just trying to give my perspective). But the larger issue of how the League views its members and its inability to communicate effectively when things go wrong speak to a serious problem that goes to the core of why the ARRL exists. Are they here for us or are we here for them?
Did you happen to get a response from K1KI?
73,
Pat, NG1G