Planet source code, the largest open source site is in danger !

ADDENDUM 6/19/2015: Hopeful news...Planet source code may be returning!! We are looking at restoring from the zip files on the PSC cd. This would restore 50-75% of the bext code (and perhaps purge some of the less desirable code that didn't qualify foe the cd). We will know in a few weeks whether this works or not. Please stay tuned and thanks everyone for all your kind emails!! 


THE BELOW IS NOW OUT OF DATE, but is included for historical info 


June 16, 2015 

I have some extremely sad news. After 20 years, Planet Source Code is shutting down. The storage area network that stored the uploads experienced a catastrophic hardware failure, and all of the uploads have been lost. Without them, it doesn't make sense to continue running the site. 

What happened?
As many of you have noticed, the site has been up and down the last several weeks. The site was hosted on an fairly expensive ($75,000) co-located system with our own private VMware cloud. The data was stored on a state-of-the-art Hewlett-Packard storage area network, with multiple redundancies. The RAID hardware could handle up to two disk failures in any sub partition at one time, and still continue working. 

Sometime in the last half year, the site experienced two hard drive failures in the partition that holds the site uploads. But unfortunately, I never knew about it. Due to a technician mistake during setup, the system never alerted an administrator. By the time I happened to notice something was strange, a third drive had failed, which was more failure than the system was designed to handle.

We've been trying for the last couple of weeks to try to recover, and I spent several thousand dollars in technician fees, but unsuccessfully. Unfortunately, the data is lost. Without all the code, planet source code has no purpose to continue running.

Very sad, but proud too
Looking back, I'm very proud of what Planet Source Code accomplished. It was one of the very first open-source websites, before the concept of open source even existed. It's been an incredible resource for millions of programmers. I poured my heart and soul into it for two decades, so this is a difficult moment. 

A labor of love

I also poured my pocketbook into it: many years the immense bandwidth with the site uses has cost more money to run than it made back in advertising. But the site wasn't about money: it was about programming. I've been honored to be able to interact with so many of my fellow programmers on the site. And I wish all of you the best.


As always, keep on coding,
Ian Ippolito
P.S. a few of you have asked what other projects I'm going to be working on. Nothing so far the programming field, but here's what I'm doing: 
1) Dollar candy: Play 60 second puzzles against three other people for real money! Legal in 36 states and overseas.
2) The Real Estate Crowdfunding Review: Investing tools that cut through the clutter and the hype. Real information and reviews. Real-time investment feeds. Real profitable.
3) Exhedra Solutions Inc.: The company that started it all and was the holding company for Planet Source Code.

And I'm sure there will be some other things to announce in the future. Again, all the best to everyone.

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