Essay

My Server Outage Experiences

February 5, 2026 2 min read

My database servers kept going down, how I have dealt with this.

So here is the scenario:
I previously migrated from SQL to Postgres. Instead of hosting in Azure I decided to host on a home server. I built a maintenance page so that if the system couldn't connect to the database it would show it.

I was anticipating this in a way when I was doing maintenance on the server, updating postgres, updating docker and so that if anything happened it would just show a nice screen so that I had time to investigate and resolve.

Here is what happened:
Recently by ISP changed by external IP. This was actually pretty bad, I had to update my DNS to point correctly and everything was back up. Actually not so bad. But I should have realized I needed a better internal network management.

Here is what recently happened:
I recently moved the server in the house, when I did, the internal IP changed, I updated my routing tables and things were back up. I know I thought about it being an issue, because it was, I also had to update the connection string on the AI Enhancer.

A few days later:
My internal IP change again! What! Well i know how to fix this, no problem. Wait yes it is a problem. When will this happen again? How should I stop this? Well thats easy because I don't want to update the routing again. Its only takes about 10-20 min. But you know what else takes 10-20 min? Learning how to setup a DHCP Reservation and setting a static IP on the internal machine. So I did. I don't want to have to fix that issue again.

So do that, think about what would make the system better and more stable. And do that.