While I am not involved in the 'structure' of VATSIM, VATUSA or any of the system's servers and access points, I am very pleased there are many who help make the on-line experience incredibly realistic as well as a great deal of fun for both learning and cameraderie. While I imagine it has been said before, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to the 'unknown' owners and operators for their dedication, and hope there might be some way we can learn about their financial needs and contribute in some way from time to time. In my work, I know it is really hard to predict a failure of hardware and I am sure all these guys and gals are hearbroken when things fail. THANKS FOR NOT THROWING IN THE TOWEL at every whimper and whine.

I too have an appreciation for the effort of vatsim administrators and what they do for our continued enjoyment of the network. I am sorry if my previous comment offended anyone, the frustration overwhelmed my thoughts for a time  to a point of irrational thought  Again, I congratulate admins on their work and had no intention of appearing ignorant.

This was posted in Facebook

The data server that hosts stats, vatsim.net among others suffered a hard drive failure last night, at 1915Z we will be shutting down this server in order to perform essential maintenance. We expect about a 30-45 minute downtime if all goes smooth. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

Thanks. Is it normal then that it is still down? Why is the main website down?
EDIT: disregard that last part