Extended Gmail Outage Frustrates Admins

CWmike writes "A prolonged, ongoing Gmail outage has some Google Apps administrators pulling their hair out as their end users, including high-ranking executives, complain loudly while they wait for service to be restored. At about 5 p.m. US Eastern on Wednesday, Google announced that the company was aware of the problem preventing Gmail users from logging into their accounts and that it expected to fix it by 9 p.m. on Thursday. Google offered no explanation of the problem or why it would take it so long to solve the problem, a '502' error when trying to access Gmail. Google said the bug is affecting 'a small number of users,' but that is little comfort for Google Apps administrators. Admin Bill W. posted a desperate message on the forum Thursday morning, saying his company's CEO is steaming about being locked out of his e-mail account since around 4 p.m. on Wednesday. It's not the first Gmail outage. So, will this one prompt calls for a service-level agreement for paying customers? And a more immediate question: Why no Gears for offline Gmail access at very least, Google?"

Comments

The benefits of cloud computing

[mlwmohawk]

Someone else deals with all the problems, right?

Re:The benefits of cloud computing

[electrictroy]

That's no excuse. When I need a word processor, I need it NOW, not tomorrow. I do not want my software to be dependent upon anything except my Cl drive. No net connection required.

Re:The benefits of cloud computing

[mlwmohawk]

because you don't have the same amount of control you feel like it is riskier. But it isn't

I have a real problem with "cloud computing" and the lack of control is just once piece. With google, there is no assurance that *my* problem is being worked on. *My* problem will get handled in the order in which it was reported. (if at all) To me, MY problem is the most important problem.

The problem with "cloud" computing, and probably the biggest IMHO, is the importance of "you" and your interests to the company providing your service. Suppose that you build your own business on a company providing virtual machine services. All is going well, you are profitable, and poof!! they decide to drop the service because it isn't profitable for them. What if they see what you are doing and say "hey, that's a great business idea, how does he do that, lets look at the code." and so on.

I could go on, but there is a lot to be said about "building" your own business, and my rule of thumb is: "Committing to a single vendor lock-in, in the long run, will always be worse than doing it yourself."

Re:The benefits of cloud computing

[Firehed]

Yeah, that's usually what I was saying about email when the exchange server at my previous employer went down every third week or so. Or when some rodent chewed through the line that handled the VOIP. Or when some transformer down the street got plowed by some idiot driver causing sporadic access to the mains for half a day. Word processors in the cloud may not make a ton of sense right now, but email is fundamentally useless without every machine in the chain working properly.

You try running your software without a power connection and let me know how it goes for you. Laptop batteries don't last that long, and desktop UPSs even less so (assume that the generator, if present, can only keep the servers online indefinitely, not the whole building).

Gmail being down for a few hours is a minor inconvenience at worst. If your dirt cheap or free and completely awesome email being unavailable for two hours a year is causing you to lose business, then you seriously need to rethink your operations. You have a landline, a cell phone, and a fax (among others), and if those are all also out of commission then chances are you've got bigger problems. You know, that mushroom cloud hovering overhead.

Re:The benefits of cloud computing

[Anonymous Coward]

email is fundamentally useless without every machine in the chain working properly.

Ummm, no. SMTP was designed a long time ago when computers & networks were much less reliable than they are now. You can have multiple email servers on multiple internet providers on multiple backbones for outstanding reliability and graceful failover.

Of course, you do have to configure the redundancy - it doesn't magically appear.

If you need something done right do it yourself!

[EncryptedSoldier]

You can't count on Google to run your IT...sorry buddy. Using Google may be cost effective, but the obvious trade off is that someone else is really doing your job, and if that person drops the ball, then you really screwed the pooch, at least that's what your boss will think.

These guys need a brain transplant...

[Khyber]

"Admin Bill W. posted a desperate message on the forum Thursday morning, saying his company's CEO is steaming about being locked out of his e-mail account"

Run your own damned mail server if it's THAT IMPORTANT. Seriously, it's not hard to set one up, and you've obviously got the money to do it.

Once again, it's a case of rich people with more money than brains having the problems. Nothing important here, nothing of value lost.

Re:These guys need a brain transplant...

[Rary]

Run your own damned mail server if it's THAT IMPORTANT. Seriously, it's not hard to set one up, and you've obviously got the money to do it.

Right. Because some nerdy 20-something admin with a copy of "Sendmail for Dummies" can do a much better job than all the engineers at Google.

This is a paid service offered by one of the largest and most knowledgeable technology companies around. They should be able to do a much better job than any internal IT department. There are arguments in favour of doing it yourself, but there are definitely arguments in favour of outsourcing to a competent provider, which Google should be.

This is a PR disaster for Google.

it can go both ways

[Trepidity]

I've been at plenty of places that run their own mailservers where uptime is considerably worse than Gmail's, so it'd be an improvement to offload it. The biggest problem seems to be at medium-sized shops: big enough for there to be problems, but not so big that you have some sort of massively redundant setup with transparent failover and 24/7 staffing. The ideal of the cloud-computing style of outsourcing is that you'd outsource to someone who was big enough to have a massively redundant setup with transparent failover and 24/7 staffing. However Google seems not to have delivered on that ideal.