I've noticed a pretty consistent pattern of EC's timing out and displaying the Database Error page around 17:00 UTC for several days. The last time I saw this dialog was before the data loss, so I thought it would be good to report this, although I'm assuming this may be evident from the service telemetry as well.
Hey! I think this thread will help you http://emptyclosets.com/forum/empty-closets-help-feedback/200139-error.html Some of us noticed this happening a couple of days ago. It happens around 5 am UTC and 5 pm UTC, twice a day. The delay which results in DB error, not displaying the page and hence not allowing access to EC lasts a few minutes at best and 15-20 minutes at worst.
Those errors are happening at the time when the backup script runs. It takes about 20 minutes for the MySQL server to make a dump of the entire database, which it does twice a day. During the time it's making the dump, the SQL server is almost 100% occupied with the necessary reading and writing to back up the database, so there aren't enough resources to service all of the page view requests (and post requests) from those reading and posting to EC. This is a problem we plan to have resolved no later than 2nd quarter this year, as we switch to new and more robust hardware.
I can confirm that just after 5 o'clock GMT (or UTC, if you prefer!) the site will go down, run slowly, and it'll be prone to double posts. The admin staff say that this is simply because of the forum's back-up script, but they WOULD say that wouldn't they. Spoiler (It is because of the back-up script)
