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Keeping an Eye Out When Sites Go Down

Posted by timothy on from the he-said-go-down dept.

miller60 writes "Are major web sites going down more often? Or are outages simply more noticeable? The New York Times looks at the recent focus on downtime at services like Twitter, and the services that have sprung up to monitor outages. When a site goes down, word spreads rapidly, fueled by blogs and forums. But there have also been a series of outages with real-world impact, affecting commodities exchanges, thousands of web sites and online stores."

2 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. New sites are more complicated... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So they're more likely to suffer downtime as any one of the many pieces can break, causing it to all go down. Look at a site like Drudge Report that gets massive traffic, but is really VERY simple to run. Then look at a site like Twitter or YouTube or something like that, which has many more services to operate and keep running together.

  2. Blackstart capability by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What with the "software as a service" and "outsourcing system administration" fads, more sites are relying on other sites being up when they power up. This could become a problem in bringing a site back up after an outage. It's important to know which sites have "black start" capability; they can start up without any resources from the outside.

    You can save money by outsourcing Linux system administration to Tomsk, Russia, or Lotus system administration to India. "Remote System Administration for your Lotus Notes/Domino Servers, Infrastructure". But can you then restart your data center from a cold start, when the offshore admin people can't yet get in?