outage
10 result(s) displayed (1 - 10 of 10):
4 Lessons from the Biggest Internet Service Outages of 2011
The recent three-day service outage of Research In Motion's Blackberry email service caused a chill felt across the world. And I'm not just talking about the affected customers. The chill was also felt by practically every IT network service professional watching the headlines in mid October, who know that if this could happen to a company with as many resources as RIM, it can happen in their department too.
As we close down 2011, we can reflect on (and learn from) the numerous, high-profile outages that occurred: Bank of America in March; Amazon EC2, Verizon LTE and Yahoo! Mail and Microsoft in April; and then Apple and Microsoft in August. In analyzing these disasters, I've come up with four lessons to be learned - they'll help protect your company's reputation, technical integrity and customer satisfaction during technical crises.
Gmail Goes Down [Breaking]
Well, something is wrong with Gmail. Around 11:29 a.m. Pacific time, users started reporting a Gmail outage for both regular Gmail and Google Apps customers. Some users are reporting intermittent access or partial loading, but the disruption is still taking place as of 10 minutes later.
Update 11:45 a.m.: Many users are reporting that service has returned (and we're back online at RWW). Others still having trouble.
Update 11:52 a.m.: @Gmail just tweeted the all clear but quickly deleted the post.
Update 11:56 a.m.: Okay, now we're clear.
We've put together Twitter reports confirming the outage using Storify, and we'll update as we learn more about what went wrong.
Doing It Right: Google Docs Apologizes for Yesterday's Outage
Was your workday interrupted by the Google Docs outage yesterday? Mine, too. Well, today, Google Docs Engineering Director Alan Warren apologized to us, and he did so in a nice, thorough blog post that explains exactly what happened.
The Docs team pushed a change that was "designed to improve real time collaboration within the document list." That sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately, it revealed a big old memory management bug that they couldn't detect until it was exposed to the full force of Google Docs users. Basically, the machines that check for updates didn't clear their memory properly, so they filled up and crashed, shifting the load onto other machines, causing them to crash, and away we go. The team caught the problem within half an hour. It's worth reading the blog post to see exactly how.
Twitter Confirms Issue Affecting Replies and Mentions
Engineers at Twitter are busy plugging away at the microblogging service's latest outage, which appears to be preventing many users from seeing replies and mentions from others.
Twitter's support team confirmed the issue at 11:42am EST, but have not updated since, leaving many users frustrated and unsure of why they can't see replies. Among the flustered is American actress Felicia Day, whose tweet about the outage garnered a number of replies that she, ironically enough, cannot see.
Last.fm Outage Continues - Did You Notice?
Music streaming service Last.fm has been experiencing one of the most serious system outages it has ever encountered. It is just now returning to normal after being down for 24 hours. According to Last.fm database architect, the service has been "experiencing an extended period of downtime in all user-facing services," and it could take some time before those services return to a fully stable state.
While this was obviously a major problem for the company to solve, I wonder: did you notice? I can't say that I did. I haven't scrobbled in months on end. I can't remember the last time I even streamed music from Last.fm. I've moved on to bigger and better things...have you?
Social Media 2009 Outage Day 2: Everyone's Up Except Twitter
Yesterday, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google's Blogger were targeted by a person or persons unknown, in a denial-of-service attack (DDOS) that attempted to silence the voice of one individual. The target in question was a Georgian blogger who goes by the name of "Cyxymu" online, according to recent reports from CNET. While Google withstood the attack, the other services suffered. LiveJournal and Twitter went down completely and Facebook struggled throughout the day.
As we now roll into day two of the "great social media outage of 2009," you may be surprised to learn that it's not over yet. Although Facebook and LJ have recovered, Twitter is still having issues. Not only was the site down once again early this morning, Twitter developers using the API are complaining that the company is sending mixed messages by reporting that they're "back up" - when in reality many Twitter applications are still unusable.
Twitter, Facebook, and LiveJournal Down at the Same Time! (Update)
For those of you addicted to social networking, Thursday morning is starting out pretty rough. The two biggest sites for updating your status - Twitter and Facebook - are both experiencing issues this morning. Twitter's outage started around 9 AM EST today, and while Facebook is up (somewhat), posting updates and wall comments is currently very flaky. And you can't even go vent about how this makes you feel over on your LiveJournal blog because - guess what? - it's down too.
Update: Twitter says they're fighting off a DDOS attack right now but the site is back up. LJ also says they're experiencing a DDOS attack.
It's Down! The Day Google Stood Still (Updated)
We have seen our fair share of failures from web based products, but this morning, for a large number of users (at least in the U.S.), it looks like every Google service has been either wiped off the Internet or is running extremely slow for a large number of users. Even Google Search is only creeping along slowly right now, and YouTube, Google Reader, Blogger, Google Analytics, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Apps are pretty much unavailable as well.
Typically, these outages have never lasted for long, but once again, this outage shows how dependent we have become on Google for so many of our daily tasks.
Don't Worry, Says Facebook, Your Photos are Safe
Over the weekend, some Facebook users began to experience issues with their photos. Some photos weren't displaying at all while others only displayed a "question mark" graphic when you tried to view them. As it turns out, the issue was caused by a failure on the drive on which these photos were stored. The outage affected 10 to 15 percent of photos, which, given the site's current status as the top social network worldwide, is a hefty number. However, a recent post on the Facebook blog assured users that their photos were safe, backed up in several locations, and would be restored soon.
Gmail Give Millions An Unexpected Holiday
Gmail was down for so long last night that Google felt compelled to apologize this morning. Google's online apps are unavailable for short periods of time often enough for it to be unsurprising, but the length of this outage (2 hours plus) was quite remarkable.
What do you do when you're left waiting for a meeting or a lunch? If you're like us, you probably check your email. What do you do if your email keeps you waiting? Something else! What better excuse could hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, have to do something else with a few precious hours than to say "all of Gmail is down?" We presume that books were read, "to read" lists were plowed through and who knows - maybe a few babies were conceived!
Movable Type search results powered by Fast Search
