noticeboard.ru.ac.za

At 6:22 this morning, one of the hard disks in the University's IMAP server failed. This was automatically detected, the server immediately replaced the disk with a spare and started rebuilding the failed drive. No e-mail or other data will have been lost.

The failed disk is still in the process of rebuilding and will be for another couple of hours. As a result, users will find that access to their e-mail inboxes, both via the webmail client and via standalone IMAP clients such as Pegasus Mail and Outlook, is slower than usual.

Once the rebuild is complete things should return to normal.

The rebuild is currently 68% complete. It was 53% complete at 3PM.

When this has happened in the past it's taken around six hours for a complete rebuild. The difference, however, is that it's happened in the dead of the night when the machine is pretty much idle. I suspect the constant load of people (fustratedly) trying to get their mail today has drawn the process out significantly. Now that most people have gone home for the public holiday, I expect it'll proceed more quickly.