Here is an update on the PDS servers recovery after the outage caused by the CrowdStrike mishap described above:
- servers deployed prior to the outage are accessible as of this writing.
- new PDS servers can be requested as per the procedure outlined in the documentation;
- users may request immediate deletion of a PDS server by submitting the corresponding request, these manual requests will be processed immediately.
- no PDS server will be decommissioned automatically until noon time Tuesday, July 30th, 2024 (US Eastern time zone) even if its expiration date has already lapsed or will lapse before that moment;
- at noon time Tuesday, July 30th, 2024 (US Eastern time zone) the standard policy of expiration after 30 days will be re-established, and all servers scheduled for deletion based on that policy will be decommissioned.
Any inconvenience caused by the temporary unavailability of the PDS servers is regretted.
Survey Solutions deployed to other (user-controlled) instances may or may not have been affected. This depends on whether the CrowdStrike software was used, and whether the faulty update was received and installed before it was recalled. It is recommended that the users check their installations directly and follow the guidance released with regards to this incident if problems are detected.
Guidance is offered by CrowdStrike, as well as by numerous third-parties:
Microsoft has updated its set of tools for recovery to help with this issue.
All users are advised to exercised caution when applying recommendations or using tools (programs, scripts, configuration settings, etc) of any third parties so as not to introduce a vulnerability to their systems.