Hello. This is the letter I never expected I would have to write, primarily because I never saw this coming.
...
I may have slightly panicked; they have assured me a new server can be up in about a day. Fingers crossed!
Regardless of what the specific technical failure might have been, and regardless of whether someone else is going to be able to step in and fix that technical failure for you, it is fairly startling that there doesn't seem to be any hint of an apology in your post or even any acknowledgement of culpability.
Would you agree that ultimately, this has almost nothing to do with the server hardware and everything to do with the decision to store private keys on a web-accessible server that is operated and maintained by somebody else, relying on a backup strategy over which you don't appear to have any direct control or direct involvement? I am not suggesting that it is
never a good idea to store private keys on a web-accessible server -- obviously many services could not be operated otherwise. But I would suggest that any decision to do so ought to be undertaken with full awareness of exactly what the h*** is going on with that server, and with an absolute willingness to take full responsibility for it and everything that happens to it. From what I can tell, you have expressed neither familiarity with what is going on nor a willingness to take full responsibility for it.
Am I wrong about that?
Yes you are wrong. I took reasonable precautions with weekly backups and the server failure was not due to any kind of mechanical error, hack attempt, shoddy code etc. it was due to something dumb which happened in the server room, like someone spilling coffee on a RAID disk. BitVPS already apologized to me about it. I can see how my saying "sorry" can make people feel better but this "sorry" is more akin to "sorry it rained, we can't play baseball today". So yeah, I'm sorry about what happened. You better believe it. But it's not logical for me to assume culpability, no.
Actually I have to admit I am a little suprised at the negativity I'm getting over this, it's as if people automatically assume every failure is intentional.
We're still incorporating in June.
We're still getting an office and a telephone number.
We're still moving forward with "secret project X" (send a msg if you are interested in this project).
The issue here is we lost a couple thousand dollars in the wallet and the ability to prove we're GLBSE claimants.