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Google Apps Suffering Partial Outage

Posted by Unknown on from the eternal-recurrence dept.

First time accepted submitter Landy DeField writes "Tried accessing your Gmail today? You may be faced with 'Temporary Error (500)' error message. Tried to get more detailed information by clicking on the 'Show Detailed Technical Info' link which loads a single line... 'Numeric Code: 5.' Clicked on the App status dashboard link. All were green except for the Admin Control Panel / API. Took a glance 2 minutes ago and now, Google mail and Google Drive are orange and Admin Control Panel / API is red. Look forward to the actual ...'Detailed Technical Info' on what is going on." The apps dashboard confirms that there is a partial outage of many Google Apps. The Next Web ran a quick article about this, and in the process discovered there was an outage on the same date last year.

150 comments

  1. Fools! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's because Medusa is on the prowl. You don't want to fool with Medusa.

  2. Yearly thing by Quakeulf · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's like the start of a new tradition! Yay! :3

    1. Re:Yearly thing by WizardFusion · · Score: 1

      We'll have to see if the reason for this failure is the same as last years.

    2. Re:Yearly thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As they teach you in HCI class, consistency is key for an ideal user experience. So this is just another small change by Google to improve usability.

    3. Re:Yearly thing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      I've said it before and I'll say it again: so far not a single large "cloud" provider has been anywhere near as reliable as either my (relatively small) hosting provider, or my own servers.

      When they can offer uptime comparable to what I already have, I might consider using them for important things. Not until.

    4. Re:Yearly thing by lgw · · Score: 1

      If by "reliable" you mean "no failures for any users anywhere" then sure. If your service has 300 million users, you're going to have downtime for some of them more frequently than if you have 300 users. But if by "reliable" you mean "no failures for a randomly chosen user" then they're already quite good (and technology is just starting to mature in this space - it will get better).

      Of course, most of the problems we've seen on /. have been for the free services. I'd hope the paid services are better.

      But the real appeal of the cloud is: you're the CIO of some megacorp. You already outsource your IT to the lowest bidder, who you don't much trust and whose uptime leaves something to be desired. The cloud is cheaper, at least as reliable, and dramatically reduces the number of problems that you can't blame someone else for. Win-win.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:Yearly thing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "f by "reliable" you mean "no failures for any users anywhere" then sure. If your service has 300 million users, you're going to have downtime for some of them more frequently than if you have 300 users."

      No. By "reliable" I mean "not being down in any given year, for any length of time, for any significant percentage of your user base".

      And EVERY major cloud service so far has failed that standard. Every one that I know of: Microsoft Azure, iCloud (which is based on Azure), AWS, Google Apps, Gmail... the list goes on.

    6. Re:Yearly thing by lgw · · Score: 1

      OK, so, what then? I've never worked anywhere that didn't have regular service outages for stuff like mail. The fact that most of the outages were planned doesn't make then any less down. And even the unplanned ones were at least once a year - usually due to being too cheap with the corporate internet connection.

      Reliability is easy at very small scale - just run a single server with some OS that doesn't need regular reboots. But the cost per user is remarkably high, in comparison.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    7. Re:Yearly thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reliability is easy at very small scale - just run a single server with some OS that doesn't need regular reboots.

      I agree. I help out at a non-profit organization of about 12 users and they run their own mail server on CentOS. Except for extended periods of power outages, we have had no issues with down time (and before you say "you just proved my point" think about this: if there's an outage, chances are the office will also be without power. They are not getting their emails anyway).

      Compare that with the company I work for (approximately 120 users, spread across two locations): We use Yahoo! as our "cloud" email provider. Every so often, we would get issues like this (Hey, that's today!) where it would affect a small handful of users because of "one server", or multi-day bullshit like these where they said they had fixed the issue the day before.

    8. Re:Yearly thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK, so, what then? I've never worked anywhere that didn't have regular service outages for stuff like mail. The fact that most of the outages were planned doesn't make then any less down.

      Well, dumbfuck, while I only have four nines uptime, all of my outages are announced and occur between midnight and 2am Sunday morning. I've had 45 minutes outside of those parameters on any of my servers (file, print, authentication, email, web, intranet, etc) in the last fourteen years.

       

      But the cost per user is remarkably high, in comparison.

      I don't care what your SLA reads, I can assrape you to hell and back if the data is compromised.

      Remarkably high? Really?

      I think you've worked for some fucking hacks.

    9. Re:Yearly thing by lgw · · Score: 1

      With that level of arrogance I can only assume your setup is fatally flawed in some way that you're blind to.

      I don't care what your SLA reads, I can assrape you to hell and back if the data is compromised.

      Well, having insiders leak information hurts just as much. If your data at rest is both encrypted and on servers that none of your employees have physical or admin access too, I'd rest easy. I'm always amazed that people encrypt some of their customer information, and I'm sure that will continue as data moves to the cloud, but you can't fix people.

      I think you've worked for some fucking hacks.

      No doubt. But still, that's the norm for corporate America, and the big cloud providers are reliable enough by comparison. And for a small company, the cloud is way better than what you improvise because you can't afford 1 skilled IT guy yet.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    10. Re:Yearly thing by exomondo · · Score: 1

      When they can offer uptime comparable to what I already have, I might consider using them for important things. Not until.

      What do you classify as 'comparable'?

    11. Re:Yearly thing by treeves · · Score: 1

      HCl class? You mean chemistry class? That's like calling biology class 'frog class' isn't it?

      --
      ...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
    12. Re:Yearly thing by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

      "Reliability is easy at very small scale - just run a single server with some OS that doesn't need regular reboots. But the cost per user is remarkably high, in comparison."

      That may be true but it has nothing to do with my point. My point was: until the reliability is up to what I consider to be a reasonable level (and I consider reasonable to be the same as the services that I currently use), then I'm not putting my important business "in the cloud".

      It may be that kind of reliability in "the cloud" is prohibitively expensive or difficult right now. I don't care. Unreliable is unreliable.

    13. Re:Yearly thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. With its own Google Doodle.

  3. Oh well by Reality+Man · · Score: 0

    I use it a lot to share design info. But there should a way to work offline while the "cloud" sorts itself out. Of course, synchronizing after is going to be a nightmare. Eh, better just let it be inaccessible for a while.

    1. Re:Oh well by ByOhTek · · Score: 2

      It's been said before and again. You shouldn't rely on the cloud as your sole point of data access.

      It's fine for backup and collaboration, but otherwise... I'm always a fan of in-house.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    2. Re:Oh well by cdrudge · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Because in-house servers NEVER go down.

      The only difference between in house and cloud-based email in this case is who the fingers get pointed at when the fecal matter hits the air conveyance device.

    3. Re:Oh well by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      That's not the only difference.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    4. Re:Oh well by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

      Right. Because the boss is sure to say: "You chose to use the cloud, and now it's down, but don't worry ... it's not your fault"

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re:Oh well by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 2

      It's better, arguably, to have the servers in house because at least you can be seen working feverishly to fix the problems rather than just sitting on your hands telling your boss to be patient.

    6. Re:Oh well by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Funny

      This is easily solved by keeping an old tower around, prefereably with lots of fans and blinky lights. When something is down, you drag an impressive amount of gear and supplies around it (Mountain Dews, Cheetos, beer, etc.) and look busy until Google figures it out.

      They'll never know. If they ask, you are working on the Google 'preprocessor' or something like that.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    7. Re:Oh well by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh, and this is why Slashdot needs to keep this sparse UI - from a distance it looks like every other debugger / testing program. Close up it's incoherent garbage which is exactly what a debugging / testing program would look like to a layman.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    8. Re:Oh well by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 4, Informative

      We switched to Google Apps a few years ago. In that time I've seen maybe a dozen full or partial outages. Some were not Google's fault. Internet routing or DNS problems were responsible some of the time. One instance was when a drunk driver hit a telephone pole about a quarter of a mile away and severed our fiber connection. When it is down, I still end up spending half the day dealing with the outage. But In a decade of running our email in house, I had just one outage. We did have a few instances of where our Internet connection was down so outside email did not flow, but at least internal communications worked.

    9. Re:Oh well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You shouldn't rely on anything as your sole point of data access.

    10. Re:Oh well by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      We switched to Google Apps a few years ago. In that time I've seen maybe a dozen full or partial outages. Some were not Google's fault. Internet routing or DNS problems were responsible some of the time. One instance was when a drunk driver hit a telephone pole about a quarter of a mile away and severed our fiber connection. When it is down, I still end up spending half the day dealing with the outage. But In a decade of running our email in house, I had just one outage. We did have a few instances of where our Internet connection was down so outside email did not flow, but at least internal communications worked.

      Ok. So if you are running you Google for Business correctly you should still have access to local copies of important documents and critical email accounts should all be going through a local non web based client that downloads emails locally.
      So how many times in the decade of running you local email did you have issues that made things the same as if Google was down and you were doing things correctly?
      What I see there is you saying ...
      Sometimes when Google was down it was stuff that would have effected us even with our own servers.
      Sometimes it was not.
      Sometimes when I ran my own servers I got affected.
      OMG Google sucks.

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    11. Re:Oh well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, its because its under your control. Like any business google will only fix/improve things if not doing so will lose them money. Meanwhile an in-house system can be made redundant or have a fail-over backup system - even if it costs more money (A choice that google never gives you).

      Besides.. it amazes me that people actually trust an advertising company.. basically a parasitic type of businesses whose sole purpose is to spam shit into my eyes and ears in order to trick me to buy some shit I dont need.

    12. Re:Oh well by jimicus · · Score: 1

      Actually... yes.

      You'd be amazed how often glitches such as "router at the hotel the boss is staying at is not working properly" becomes "bloody useless IT department, should have outsourced the lot to somewhere with cheaper labour years ago, at least that way I'd be paying for what I'm getting" when the boss can't get at internally-hosted email while on the road.

      This doesn't seem to happen anything like as often when the email is outsourced.

      Meaning that even if you are regularly providing five-9's - hell, even if you can prove it - nobody believes you.

    13. Re:Oh well by Synerg1y · · Score: 1

      The only person the finger should ever get pointed to is the CEO who couldn't justify a colo site for failover cause s/he are too busy stuffing their pockets w that money in the form of "bonuses". Both in-house and cloud suffer from this. But those that really don't want downtime, find it perfectly achievable, though not free.

    14. Re:Oh well by Inda · · Score: 1

      cmd.exe
      dir /s

      I do that and walk away. Text scrolls up the screen. Everyone thinks it's computer magic. I go outside, smoke and chat.

      Renaming takes longer... ;)

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    15. Re:Oh well by RatherBeAnonymous · · Score: 1

      I never said Google sucks. I'm just pointing out some of the trade-offs. When you go web-based for your groupware application, the Internet at large becomes much more critical to your internal communications, to the point that any Internet disruptions have a large effect on internal communications. That's just the way it is. As I said, I had ONE complete outage with the internal mail server. Sure, we always had periodic Internet outages, but we we are a school with just one location, so we are pretty self contained in our needs. Internet access being down does not bring this place to a screeching halt, or didn't when we handled email in-house.

      Switching to Google Apps has been good overall. While we have had more frequent interruptions, the recovery time has been pretty short. Google can back up data better than I can and has never lost data for us irretrievably... that I know of. The one time our in house server went down there was some data I could not recover. Due to the AC getting turned off over a weekend, the groupware server malfunctioned, corrupting user data and the server configuration. The data mirror got corrupted as well, so I had to go back to tape for some stuff and recover what I could from the corrupted data stores. It took a couple of days to get it completely up and running again.

    16. Re:Oh well by coldfarnorth · · Score: 1

      Huh. You know that IT folks can make bad decisions without a CEO's help, right? And really, when was the last time you really wanted the CEO making policy decisions for the IT department.

      If you are in the unfortunate position of having to justify more spending to mitigate risks, the best policy is usually just to warn the CEO of the risks in writing. Add dollar signs to make sure they are paying attention: "In the event of a failure, recovery costs are likely to excede $###,### per failure. This risk appears to justify the cost of purchasing and installing XYZ equipment."

      Contrary to popular belief, CEOs are not to blame for every corporate disaster. Good luck.

      --
      Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
    17. Re:Oh well by Synerg1y · · Score: 1

      I'd imagine most CEOs are involved in business continuity plans, which involve disaster recovery, so there's a very good reason CEO's get blamed often times (they're ultimately responsible).

    18. Re:Oh well by ByOhTek · · Score: 1

      Never said that. Nice straw man.

      However, there are more potential points of failure with the cloud, so a well maintained in-house solution is generally better, because it eliminates many of the external network points of failure. It also allows for multiple points of on-site failover as well as offsite failover (in the case of onsite catastrophe).

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  4. Points at Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hideki!

    1. Re:Points at Google by hendrikboom · · Score: 1

      This is still funny!

    2. Re:Points at Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is still funny!

      Not so much. It might have been, a decade ago.

    3. Re:Points at Google by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      ... someone just discovered Chobits it seems.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  5. gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    4/17/13 9:09 AM
    We are continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by 4/17/13 9:55 AM detailing when we expect to resolve the problem.
    This issue is affecting less than 0.007% of the Google Mail user base. The affected users are unable to access Google Mail.

    1. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

      So, only James Bond is affected?

      --
      Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    2. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can access Gmail over the web interface or IMAP, but POP is having issues on 2 of my accounts.

    3. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Funny

      He has a license to kill -9

    4. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In my case I got login failed errors and had to change the POP3 authentication setup to use the full email address as User Name rather than just the name portion. After that it has been fine.

    5. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      One day you'll realize your level of unluckiness when Google announces a 0.0000001% outage, and... that's you!

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    6. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3 of 4 of my Google Apps customers were affected briefly. Regional maybe?

    7. Re:gmail outage effecting 0.007% of users by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

      Four different accounts impacted in California between my wife and myself. Calendars also impacted. Service restored around 8AM pacific.

      At some point a backup system is a nice-to-have, but generally Google has given us the quality of service we would have needed to pay about $30k to keep the information in-house and achieve equal reliability. It has also saved us from a few issues in the office where we would have lost connectivity. Instead, we paid $0.

      The $30k is not that bad, but the responsibility of doing a better job with the data than Google could have necessitated a full-time IT person which would have killed the economics. It does make me question the value of their paid service though...

  6. Its Back Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It just came back up for me like a few seconds ago.

  7. But outages don't happen in the interclouds by CimmerianX · · Score: 1

    I'm sure many companies who switched their productivity to Google apps are panicking... and wondering ...

    1. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by poetmatt · · Score: 1

      exactly how many are "many", when it's less than 1%?

    2. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by jkflying · · Score: 1

      Less than 1% of 1%.

      --
      Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
    3. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by DrEldarion · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They're probably thinking "wow, this response is much faster and the downtime much shorter than when we ran our own services".

      Nobody has ever sold cloud services with a guarantee of 100% uptime. It is, however, almost certain to be better than the vast majority of companies' homegrown solutions.

    4. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by joebok · · Score: 1

      I'm sure no cloud contract has a 100% uptime guarantee, but it is "sold" as the perfect solution all the time.

      I try to remind people that the cloud is not filled with magic beans. Sometimes it is just what is needed, sometimes it isn't; it depends!

    5. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by coldfarnorth · · Score: 1

      Hey, that's what I was thinking this morning!

      I've got better things to do than baby servers along, so it sure is nice to have this be someone else's problem. Things were fixed in less than 30 minutes for us. Maybe 6 people at our company (roughly 60 people) even noticed that there was a problem.

      And I got 30 minutes without anyone pestering me by email. Glorious.

      --
      Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
    6. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by idontgno · · Score: 1

      I'm sure no cloud contract has a 100% uptime guarantee, but it is "sold" as the perfect solution all the time

      And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between a signed SLA and marketing.

      I'm sure it's inconvenient and unfortunate and maddening to the many affected, but it's not as if your internal fully-owned fully-self-managed infrastructure never have a backhoe network outage or a widely-deployed OS patch-o-death that knocks your operations into a loop for hours or days.

      The cloud is just another variant. Its failure modes and victimology aren't necessarily more interesting or damaging; just more headline-worthy.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    7. Re:But outages don't happen in the interclouds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You honestly think that most companies have redundant systems anywhere near the level that Google does?

      This issue affected something like 0.007% of all users. The fact that the number is so low is testament to how robust these systems are.

  8. Can't you guys read? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    They sent an email explaining the cause of the... oh wait.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
    1. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      So what would be wrong with that? An email notice that it is down would be absurd, but an email explaining the cause makes perfect sense, since they will have it working again at some point if it isn't already.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    2. Re:Can't you guys read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you can't access the service that provides your e-mail, how will you access the e-mail that describes why you can't access your service that provides your e-mail?

    3. Re:Can't you guys read? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      If... your e-mail doesn't work... how would you read the... um, said e-mail?
      I tell you, there's MAGIC at work!

      But I give you that: it DOES make some sense, because if your web-based e-mail isn't working, maybe the back-end works; maybe you can read e-mails on your mobile device; maybe POP push works, or IMAP, or whatever.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    4. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 0

      "If... your e-mail doesn't work... how would you read the... um, said e-mail? I tell you, there's MAGIC at work!"

      Slow down and think. You would read the email explaining why the system was down. Perhaps an example will help you realize that I don't need you to "give" me anything:

      Dear Customer,

      As you may be aware our email system was down, but since you are reading this now, it clearly is working again. We experienced a temporary outage of the web interface, because some incompetent douchebag screwed up again this year. We apologize for hiring him, and his parents apologize for having conceived him.

      Sincerely,

      Eric Schmidt

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 0

      You might want to take a remedial reading comprehension course.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    6. Re:Can't you guys read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To: user@somewhere.com
      From: google@hotmail.com .....

    7. Re:Can't you guys read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slow down and think.

      Here's someone who's trying way too hard to explain away his lack of a sense of humor. Meanwhile, we're pointing and laughing, and laughing, and laughing.

      Oh, boy.

    8. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 0

      True humor has an element of truth in it. Since there was no element of truth in it, the humor is non-existent. It is only funny if you mistakenly see an element of truth where there is none.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    9. Re:Can't you guys read? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Two aliens land near a gas pump. One pulls out a laser gun and yells: "Earthling, kneel!" The other alien runs away. Big explosion ensues. The trigger happy alien emerges from the blast quite well smashed and asks the other: "why did you run away?"
      The other alien says "when I saw his dick hanging out all the way to the ground and up again and stuck in his ear, I realized these earthlings are pretty tough".

      True humor. Not really an element of truth in it. Wow.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    10. Re:Can't you guys read? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Makes sense :)

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    11. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      "True humor. Not really an element of truth in it. Wow."

      The truth is that, to an alien, a gas pump nozzle and hose inserted in a gas tank might look like a being with his dick hanging out all the way to the ground and up again and stuck in his ear. The second truth is that you went all the way to a bizarre alien joke to try to make your point, and failed in epic proportions.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    12. Re:Can't you guys read? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Did I at least make you laugh?
      Also WHOOOSH.

      Really now, you went all the way to analyze a bloody joke just to fuel an argument over the INTERNET? Good god.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    13. Re:Can't you guys read? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How does one end up as anally retentive as you?
      The fact that you went as far as you did with this certainly makes me laugh at you...and that's the truth!

    14. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      No. I simply countered your attempt to disprove a well known maxim of comedy. In truth, I did laugh quite hard, but not at the joke. What is funny is the irony of a guy thinking he was being smart, but actually openly making himself look completely foolish while attempting to make me look foolish.

      And for the record, I can guarantee you I have an excellent sense of humor as verified by hundreds if not thousands of unsolicited reports from people I encounter from day to day. There is simply nothing funny about a technology joke that gets the actual technological implications wrong, unless of course the joke is about someone getting them wrong.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    15. Re:Can't you guys read? by war4peace · · Score: 1

      No amount of treatment can fix YOU.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    16. Re:Can't you guys read? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      Yes. I agree. You cannot fix what isn't broken ;-)

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  9. In the mean time... by El+Lobo · · Score: 2

    In the mean time...I'm working in my desktop machine, saving to my own disk (with automatic backup to my server AND my machine at work) and getting my mail into my own server not depending one ounce on any cloud services. Life is good.

    --
    It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
    1. Re:In the mean time... by SJHillman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sounds like you have a comparatively high number of potential points of failure compared to the cloud services.

    2. Re:In the mean time... by neminem · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you can fix it. (Unless the something is your internet connection, I suppose. But then, if your internet connection died, you wouldn't really be able to use services in the cloud, either.)

    3. Re:In the mean time... by bufke · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is the real benefit with Google Apps. When Google Apps is down...I don't have to do anything! Life is good.

    4. Re:In the mean time... by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you can fix it.

      It might make one feel like they're taking a more "active" role in the problem, but you're likely to spend as much time fixing your homegrown solution as Google is fixing Gmail. With the cloud solution when something goes wrong though SOMEONE ELSE fixes it.

      Besides - Gmail actually has an "offline" mode available for Chrome users. For those really that worried about downtime they can use that.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    5. Re:In the mean time... by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you can fix it.

      Alternatively, if something breaks in Google's servers, it gets immediate attention by people who know a hell of a lot more than I do about maintaining a server. And things are multiply redundant, making something breaking comparatively unlikely.

    6. Re:In the mean time... by someones · · Score: 1

      so in the cloud there is no smtp? no imap? no http? ... do you expect things magically turn into cloud transfer protocol or what?

      In the cloud you just have MORE potential points of failure: namely all that you have locally and all that run the cloud server, the loadbalancers, ... which is much more points of failure you can ever grasp.

      The diffrence is, who gets blamed. But if your boss doesnt see you working while noone in the company gets any work done, dont expect to get a raise too soon.
      On the other hand, if you are running all the things in a cloud you most likely dont deserve it anyway.

    7. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you can fix it.

      Alternatively, if something breaks in Google's servers, it gets immediate attention by people who know a hell of a lot more than I do about maintaining a server. And things are multiply redundant, making something breaking comparatively unlikely.

      If what you say is true then all these cloudy things should be having a far better track record than they actually do. Obviously they don't know as much about multiply redundant systems and maintenance as much as you think they do because here we are with an outage. And all they can say is "oh, it doesn't matter, only some fraction of a percent are impacted, carry on".

    8. Re:In the mean time... by someones · · Score: 1

      my servers at home are more stable and reachable that google ;)

      Its like the 3rd time in 2 years google fails.

    9. Re:In the mean time... by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      .007% is down for one day.

      what percentage of in house email users do you think are having trouble today?

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    10. Re:In the mean time... by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      It's .007% of their users, and last time it was a different small percentage. If you assume all of google is down when 1 in 10000 users are, it sounds bad. The reality of it is that It's not.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    11. Re:In the mean time... by rev0lt · · Score: 1
      Let me rephrase that:

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you need to stop whatever your doing to fix it.

      It is not always an advantage... and I do prefer to work with my own resources than to rely on 3rd party "service" providers, but there are a lot of cases when choosing a provider is the sane approach.

    12. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My desktop has been unstable recently. I had to work on a paper and I did not want to rely on the machine. I used google docs. It was down this morning. I wanted to shut my head in a car door.

    13. Re:In the mean time... by stanlyb · · Score: 1

      If i am part of this 0.007%, then the reality check says that for me it is 100%

    14. Re:In the mean time... by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Yes, you ate correct, for this year you may only have 3 9s of uptime, but ll of these partial downs we hear about are small percentages, It's not like every year everyone loses a half day or so, most people haven't suffered through and outage at all since the inception of apps for.business. a small percentage have had only 3 9s of uptime for a year, and totally up otherwise.

      the story told is very high reliability, not omg, its down every year.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    15. Re:In the mean time... by coldfarnorth · · Score: 2

      Google apps is sold with a 99.9% uptime guarantee - that works out to a maximum of 526 minutes downtime per year.

      In the last three years that we've been using Google apps, I've never had more than one hour of cumulative downtime in a calendar year. I also haven't spent a single second configuring or monitoring email servers, backing up email data, or with an executive breathing down my neck while I work on a server problem.

      I'm pretty happy about that track record.

      --
      Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
    16. Re:In the mean time... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      so in the cloud there is no smtp? no imap? no http? ... do you expect things magically turn into cloud transfer protocol or what?

      You've pretty much summed up the understanding of every PHB who was ever sold on a cloud solution.

    17. Re:In the mean time... by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      The difference is that a well designed cloud solution will have the necessary redundancy built in such that failure is less common and less catastrophic. The mere existence of loadbalancers (plural) shows that they are much better able to deal with a hardware failure than most in-house mail server solutions.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    18. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I work at a university that uses Google Apps - so I'm on there every second of every day. I literally count the outages they've had on one and so far none have lasted more than five minutes.

    19. Re:In the mean time... by keytoe · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but the difference is, if something breaks, you can fix it.

      I used to feel the same way as you and ran my own mail server. Over time, I realized that I was spending a tremendous amount of time playing email administrator cat and mouse with spammers and script kiddies.

      Since I wasn't being paid for any of this, at some point I realized that paying* Google to manage it for me was actually a good deal. They're significantly more reliable than I ever was, it's some other admin frantically fixing problems at three in the morning instead of me, and most importantly, I didn't have that 'something could go wrong' feeling hanging over my head all the time.

      * With information about me, naturally. For years I gave far too much value to maintaining privacy, and protected it rabidly. The reality is that you're being tracked/profiled no matter what you do. The world has reverted back to a village, and everyone knows who the town whore is. Trying to hide seems quaint and infeasible barring engagement of 'full hermit' mode. /endcynic

      --

      Culture is more than commerce

    20. Re:In the mean time... by kqs · · Score: 1

      Your servers never need to reboot due to hardware failure or kernel updates? Your internet never goes down? Your power never goes down? Your DNS never gets hosed? You never have storms that knock down power and data lines? Sweet!

      I run servers at my house too (for friends, non-commercially) and I'd guess that 100% of my users lose access to their email and web sites for ~8 hours a year, or about 3 9's of reliability. I bet that heads would roll at Google if they had that much unreliability.

      I switched my personal mail off of my personal servers to a gmail-hosted domain before a three week trip to Europe, and see no reason to move it back. $10/month is chickenfeed compared to knowing that when an idiot crashes his car into a substation, I just switch from my computer to my cell phone and can still get my email.

    21. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like you have a comparatively high number of potential points of failure compared to the cloud services.

      Really? Do tell us, oh dickless wonder, just how many points of failure do cloud services have?

      Just shut the fuck up. Really.

      Anybody who knows anything about the complexity of what happens behind the scenes with clouds know that the shit resides somewhere between insanity, utter fail, and emergent theory. And no, I'm not going to Google that for you.

    22. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alternatively, if something breaks in Google's servers, it gets immediate attention by people who know a hell of a lot more than I do about maintaining a server.

      Your ineptness is not the subject at hand.

      And things are multiply redundant, making something breaking comparatively unlikely.

      Cite? The again, you sound as though you're incompetent anyway, so maybe your uptime is not the metric we should be using.

    23. Re:In the mean time... by idontgno · · Score: 1

      Gmail actually has an "offline" mode

      In which you can compose a new email, and look at old email you've received, but exchange no actual email?

      Yeah. I know they didn't invent offline mode. But that doesn't change the fact that offline mode in an email program is like no-engine mode in a car. You can sit on a comfy seat out of the rain and listen to the radio, but you're not doing the one thing people actually want a car for: driving.

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    24. Re:In the mean time... by jsdcnet · · Score: 1

      Google apps is sold with a 99.9% uptime guarantee - that works out to a maximum of 526 minutes downtime per year.

      In the last three years that we've been using Google apps, I've never had more than one hour of cumulative downtime in a calendar year. I also haven't spent a single second configuring or monitoring email servers, backing up email data, or with an executive breathing down my neck while I work on a server problem.

      I'm pretty happy about that track record.

      This. 1000x this. We've been using Google Apps (paid) for 5 years and I can't remember any significant downtime in that period. We've had more problems with our internet connection than Google problems.

      --
      no longer working for cnet
    25. Re:In the mean time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the mean time...I'm working in my desktop machine, saving to my own disk (with automatic backup to my server AND my machine at work) and getting my mail into my own server not depending one ounce on any cloud services. Life is good.

      Holy shit you might be on to something: perhaps, just perhaps, the IT industry could start *selling* computers .. and computer related services provided by actual humans .. for the people using the computers that they bought ...

      I can see it now ..

      It would be called "computing" .. and the advantage will be that you pay once for the hardware .. and then you actually *own* it .. you don't need to pay more to have the same thing next hour .. next day .. next month or even .. next year .. and you can like .. *use* it (all of it!) to achieve an outcome .. any time you want .. at no extra cost .. and in private .. in your own home or business if you want (FMD!) with *guaranteed* performance and zero (I repeat - zero) over-subscription: all the power - yours - dedicated to you - like a god. Better yet, without any sort of over-arching "agreement" - you own the results it produces, including any rights you can think of that might make you more money from your own work - even if you can't think of them now (*Holy*Crap*).

      This could be so revolutionary that it appears on the hype curve before you can actually buy it .. but wait for it .. 'cause it will be *huge* when it gets here .. might even get its own magazine .. and conferences .. shit this could change everything!

    26. Re:In the mean time... by Rich0 · · Score: 1

      Have to agree. I work in a fortune 500 company and stuff like email/fileshares/network has outages on at least this kind of frequency, and I imagine it costs way more for a company to do it alone than to outsource it to Google.

      I think the Google outages just get way more publicity. If some Exchange outage results in 10% of my company not getting emails for an hour, there is a good chance the other 90% won't hear about it at all, and many of the 10% won't notice either (away in meetings, and of course the client-server design of Outlook is a bit more failure-tolerant). Heck - a few years ago a location with 10k employees lost power for almost an entire day due to some kind of utilities mess-up.

      Outages on large enterprise systems happen a lot more often than people realize.

    27. Re:In the mean time... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Yup, I know the feeling of using my own setup.

      Right now, I'm waiting for a shipment from NewEgg that should see if I can recover everything from my last computer. (They seem to die of jealousy whenever I get a replacement, usually without waiting for me to transfer everything over.)

      Naturally, the important stuff is backed up (to a cloud service), and I have that, but there's a few weeks of minor stuff I'd like to have back.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  10. Hit the paid accounts by sandytaru · · Score: 2

    This took down one of our clients who pay for Google apps. So it's not just the freebie users who got affected on this, hence Google's rapid response.

    --
    Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
    1. Re:Hit the paid accounts by hierophanta · · Score: 1

      yup same here - our organization of +50,000k users was affected. we pay for their suite and just switched over this year.

    2. Re:Hit the paid accounts by rnturn · · Score: 1

      ``our organization of +50,000k users was affected''

      So who at your company gets dinged when 50,000 employees are sitting on the hands while Google fixes their problem? Surely some monetary value can be assigned to a loss of productivity this widespread. Or does management take advantage of Google's outage by calling impromptu staff meetings?

      --
      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    3. Re:Hit the paid accounts by dickens · · Score: 4, Informative

      Confirmed here ... it was down for about an hour including the admin control panel.

      One nice thing about multi-tennancy is problems get attention immediately.. they simply cannot be ignored.

    4. Re:Hit the paid accounts by war4peace · · Score: 1

      If things were planned the right way, nobody should get dinged. Of course, things are rarely planned the right way.
      But let's say they were.
      Then there's a set of SLAs which tells the customer "we ensure 99.99% uptime. If we don't, then we deduct X dollars per minute from what we're billing you" or something like that. The customer has their expectations set and when there's an outage, it's accounted for. Furthermore, an SLA involves a theoretical loss of productivity (which is expected).

      This "witch hunt" of pointing fingers when a cloud based solution is hit by an outage is retarded and helps nobody. If anything, this behavior will make everyone become a turtle who's running away from proposing any change in the "status quo". And I am personally convinced that lack of change and lack of innovation are huge contributors to driving a company down.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    5. Re:Hit the paid accounts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      50,000 K users??? What kind of organization do you work for, the whole population of England???

    6. Re:Hit the paid accounts by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

      Hey, the FBI needed its live Gmail intercept.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    7. Re:Hit the paid accounts by acoustix · · Score: 1

      ``our organization of +50,000k users was affected''

      Or does management take advantage of Google's outage by calling impromptu staff meetings?

      And how would you notify your workers of these meetings?

      --
      "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
    8. Re:Hit the paid accounts by hierophanta · · Score: 1

      Email is used here as tool and enabler for the actual work in the org. I dont think much productivity was lost, the staff just went back to doing their primary functions. Not to be enigmatic but it is equivalent to say they went back to making widgets. Of the 50k staff, ~40k of them do not sit in front of a PC all day.

    9. Re:Hit the paid accounts by hierophanta · · Score: 1

      lol, yup i should have removed the 'K'

  11. Haha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Clouds suck!

  12. Hmm... by havana9 · · Score: 1

    4 it's an unkucky number in Japan. 17 it's also an ulucky number in Western countries. Coincidence? we at TV-Show-On-Whacky-Therories don't think so.

    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      unkucky

      ulucky

      You can do it! Go on, try again, third time's a charm.

    2. Re:Hmm... by invid · · Score: 1

      17?

      --
      The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
    3. Re:Hmm... by DamonHD · · Score: 1

      Turns out it's unlucky to be superstitious!

      Rgds

      Damon

      --
      http://m.earth.org.uk/
    4. Re:Hmm... by alexhs · · Score: 2

      4 it's an unkucky number in Japan. 17 it's also an ulucky number in Western countries.

      Amusingly, it is for the same reason.

      In japanese, 4 is pronounced "shi" in the On reading, which is an homonym of "death".
      In latin numerals 17 = XVII, which is an anagram of VIXI, which is latin for "I lived", implying "I'm dead".

      --
      I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
    5. Re:Hmm... by Chrisq · · Score: 1

      unkucky

      ulucky

      You can do it! Go on, try again, third time's a charm.

      Don't ... that's the first two lines of a summoning spell

    6. Re:Hmm... by rwise2112 · · Score: 2

      4 it's an unkucky number in Japan. 17 it's also an ulucky number in Western countries. Coincidence? we at TV-Show-On-Whacky-Therories don't think so.

      According to the Wikipedia entry for 17:

      Described at MIT as 'the least random number', according to hackers' lore.

      In Italian culture, the number 17 is considered unlucky.

      When viewed as the Roman numeral, XVII, it is then changed anagrammatically to VIXI, which in the Latin language it translates to "I have lived", the perfect implying "My life is over.

      The fear of the number 17 is called 'heptadecaphobia' or 'heptakaidekaphobia'.

      --

      "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
    7. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I lived?

      Dum vivimus, vivamus!

    8. Re:Hmm... by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 1

      Apparently 17 is considered unlucky in Italy, which didn't mean "Western countries" last time I looked.

      --
      -- Make America hate again!
    9. Re:Hmm... by Pope · · Score: 1

      Laffo at 17 being an unlucky number in Italy. You have to rearrange the damn letters first to even make the words that are supposed to be "bad."

      Man, superstitions are the dumbest thing in so many ways. At least the "shi" thing has some sort of explanation that makes a bit of sense.

      --
      It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    10. Re:Hmm... by gman003 · · Score: 2

      Coincidence? we at TV-Show-On-Whacky-Therories don't think so.

      Oh, you're with the History(tm) Channel?

    11. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nikto ?

    12. Re:Hmm... by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Apparently 17 is considered unlucky in Italy, which didn't mean "Western countries" last time I looked.

      Clint Eastwood would likely disagree with that statement.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    13. Re:Hmm... by TimMD909 · · Score: 1

      Four is unlucky in Japan because it can be pronounced "shi". Seven is also unlucky because that can pronounced "shichi". Why is this bad? "Shi" is a homophone for "death". Hence, they "invented" alternate ways to pronounce both. For #4, it's "yon". For #7, it's "nana". Simple as that, the entire Japanese society was able to cheat death. (BTW, why does /. not allow me to add kanji to this post? I feel less otaku...)

    14. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I stay up late to watch "Ancient Aliens" WITHOUT my tinfoil hat.

  13. Some Cert expired a year ago... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now we have a tradition? :-)

  14. Started lastnight with youtube by bobjr94 · · Score: 1

    Was unable to log into Youtube starting around 9pm Pacific. The log in prompt would just redirect in a loop and eventually reload the homepage with out ever giving any login dialog.

    1. Re:Started lastnight with youtube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And nothing of value was lost.

  15. No issues here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perhaps is just a local issue? I can access everything just fine from Germany.

  16. What could possibly go wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know, let's put all our mission critical apps out in the never on somebody else's servers. Sounds solid to me. Have you hugged your (local) backups lately?

  17. google gmail down for you by JecintaOnyeka · · Score: 1

    google gmail is always having outdage on this day, may be they are doing upgrading or Htaccess problem

  18. Was probably more than 0.007% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My Gmail exchange wasn't working for about 10-15 mins earlier... kept saying invalid password on my phone.

  19. Behold the tautology! by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2

    It is better to be competent, than incompetent. It is better to have the servers in house if you are competent. Of course, if you are competent, then you already have the servers in house ;-)

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    1. Re:Behold the tautology! by bobstreo · · Score: 1

      It is better to be competent, than incompetent. It is better to have the servers in house if you are competent. Of course, if you are competent, then you already have the servers in house ;-)

      To become very very competent, outsource, then insource the same services every few years.
      Usually the outsourcing will move you to a cloud based service.

    2. Re:Behold the tautology! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And have the budget and staff to have a clustered, fault-tolerant mail system. Ideally in multiple datacenters. With 24x7x365 staff coverage.

      Sorry, but small and medium-sized organizations aren't going to have that.

      Google Apps (or other hosted email/groupware systems) are going to be a more reliable choice for most smaller organizations.

      Yes, it goes down for short periods a couple times a year. It still probably has 99.95%-ish uptime. (Not quite the mythical five 9s, but that's a downtime of less than 15 minutes a year. Not many are that good.)

    3. Re:Behold the tautology! by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 1

      For companies without multiple data centers any competent person can do it with two Linux boxes. If you have multiple data centers then you have the staff.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    4. Re:Behold the tautology! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Free open source software........DURRRRR

  20. tiniest open source violin by ssam · · Score: 1

    The tiniest open-source violin plays for you. (or at least it would if you had a local copy of tiny_opensource_violin.flac)

  21. 57 apps updating. by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Sorry, this is my fault. I stupidly clicked "Update all apps" this morning.

    Sorry.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  22. NIA Superops by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There must have been an XM overload.

    Ingress.com

  23. My alarm just went off.... by cooperaaaron · · Score: 1

    Just woke up, checked my Gmail account, got mail, rolling over to go back to sleep....

  24. Glad my laptop isn't dependant on the cloud by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

    I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of chromebooks suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

    1. Re:Glad my laptop isn't dependant on the cloud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Meh, offline docs keeps going and at some point a message pops up that says last sync less than a minute ago. Magic, Google drive caught up with chrome books offline drive. Never really thought about it other than email routing being out which affected everyone.

  25. Re:Google's faget tradition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    cant be that hard

    Honestly, I hope they ruin a whole lot more than that for you.

  26. Two clouds with replication! by cras · · Score: 1

    Sorry for advertising my own product, but pretty much on topic here. :) Buy two (cheap) servers from completely different networks / data center providers, and keep them replicated with http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Replication. You can set up MX records to both of them, and use DNS to switch between the replicas for IMAP/POP3 as needed. Either one of the data centers can die and your mail won't stop working. Or keep one of the replicas in local network and your mail keeps working even if your internet connection dies.

    (Then you'll only need to hope that there are no software bugs bringing down everything.)

  27. 500 pages are the new cool! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If only they had a really fun 500 message then obviously it would be ok. After all, this is the new-school way of thinking - don't worry about making it work - just make it look cool. Awesomenessness!