I think I have found the problem that has caused the database to crash several times in the past months. It has to do with our hot backup. Under some circumstances, the process of the backup will lock the database, causing it to crash shortly thereafter.

From now on, the database will be taken off-line during the backup process. This shouldn't last more than a few minutes. So if you come to the site and notice that the database is down for backups, try again a few minutes later.