This is a nice gesture, but I prefer the services I use to take responsibility for their provider and technology choices. Your customers don't care that Azure is down, they only care that they can't do whatever they were trying to accomplish. This isn't Azure's fault. It's yours. Don't pass the buck.
And if all they said was they were experiencing difficulties you'd see people complaining that they aren't giving any indication as to what the problem is.
The site is down because their provider is down. This is, as someone else stated, a fact. They told you that and that is really all they can do. They have to wait just the same as you do, for the same thing.
> This isn't Azure's fault.
Yes it is. The alternative is to pay more (a lot more) for projects to host all their own servers and storage and backups. That would be the end of a great many small to medium companies.
They're not passing the buck, they're voicing their unhappiness. It's important that this happens, because it damages the reputation of cloud providers that go down a lot (like AWS' US-EAST). Being down for 24 hours is pretty impressive, in a bad way.
I tried Microsoft Azure for a month because I received free credits via their BizSpark program. I can confidently say their uptime is the worst I have ever seen. Nearly daily servers would loose access to disks and switch to read-only mode. Also, they lack any ability to snapshot backup servers, which is a basic requirement of a cloud platform.
I know its early, and they are just starting, but I just don't have confidence in Azure. Stick with AWS, Linode, Softlayer.
This made me think of the Netflix outage the other day. When people like my non-technical parents say things like, "did you hear Netflix went down," they don't care that it was Amazon that really went down. I don't use Soluto, so I don't know their customers, but I doubt they care that Microsoft has dropped the ball.
It's a chance we take when we deploy to the cloud, and services like Heroku only compound it because that's an additional point of failure. I'm not sure a giant "it's their fault" finger point is the best way to handle a problem, but I assume they feel pretty powerless, so finger pointing is an option.
Good luck resuming operations. Hopefully you won't loose too many customers.
When can we move beyond blaming a cloud service and just owning up to the decision? Soluto chose to use Azure and knew they were taking a risk. It's their fault for choosing to use Azure, and unless they signed for a 100.000000000% uptime guarantee (which I'm sure they didn't, given no one would give such a guarantee) they have to own up to any faults.
This extends to those services that blames AWS as well. It's not a good habit, and customers (like we saw with netflix) don't care -- all they know is that their service is down.
Azure offers a SLA with a 99,95% uptime guarantee for computing instances and a 99,9% uptime SLA for storage. If they do not meet this SLA you will get your money back.
You can read more about it at www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/
What is the extent of this outage? There isn't much info on Twitter or elsewhere. The Azure service status dashboard shows an issue impacting "Storage [South Central US]". Is that service like S3 or EBS or something entirely different?
I didn't know what Soluto was, so I went on your main page to find out what it was while your service was down. All I saw was "Service Disruption :( We are experiencing problems with our cloud infrastructure More information..." Nothing else to click on but that one link for support. So when I clicked on it, still didn't know what it was and so I scrolled all the way down and clicked "About" then yet again I was greeted by the same alert. I understand your service is down, but does it have to take your whole site with information on your product with it just to show your service is down?
Maybe a noobish question, but in the future, is there anything other than need for preparation, that prevents you from having a backup spun up on say AWS or another service provider?
It's the entire service, not a bunch of files. When Netflix went down due to AWS outage, could you image them just "restoring a backup" on rackspace and running just like that?
I can recommend trying AppHarbor - we're striving to deliver a better .NET and Windows cloud platform. Feel free to shoot me an email ([email protected]) if there's anything I can help with.
I've heard a lot of good things about AppHarbor. I still avoid .NET and Windows, but if I had to host .NET or Windows stuff somewhere, I'd go with App Harbor.
Its just too expensive, you cant host your custom domain name on free instance. And there's nothing between 0 and 50$.
I'm waiting for prices of azure web sites, hopefully it would compare to shared hosting prices.
I love this, it's refreshing. Every time something goes down, I see a flood of hate and a torrent of comments suggesting everyone move somewhere else. That, coupled with HN's hate of MSFT, makes this one of the most refreshing posts I've seen in some time. And sensible.
Wikipedia says that one of their remote features is: "Defrag the hard drives"
Someone pushed the wrong button there? ;)
Seriously, that just reminded me of running Windows back in the old days. You had to make sure to have the latest AV, do system upgrades all the time and of course defrag the drives... yay
One of the FAQ answers on the page linked to by the "More information..." link on their outage page states, "Cloud services like ourselves someone (sic) experience such outages, it's part of the modern web."
I can't believe that it actually says that. It seems extremely unprofessional to me to make a statement like that.
Downtime like this is not acceptable, regardless how the service is hosted, and who is providing the hosting.
We didn't put up with this kind of outage with the "old fashioned" Web, and we shouldn't put up with it from the so-called "modern" Web, either.
Perhaps this is part of your current problem with Azure, but is it possible to retain some part of your frontpage during an outage like this? Or failover to a static page with a basic description of the service? Your support site seems to look ok.
I only make the suggestion because I was not aware of Soluto. I went to your homepage and see the outage notice and a link to support. I still have no idea what your service is about.
Perhaps not the best time to be spruiking your site and service, but any-publicity-is-good-publicity etc.
Looks like Azure is having problems in the US south-central region [1], but fine everywhere else. The fact that they don't mention their region suggests they may not understand the implications.
If the status page is accurate, their downtime is just poor planning on their part. Same goes for Amazon. If you're stranded in one region, you're asking for downtime.
My impression of that page was not very good TBH. The words are kind, but for me at least, the message boiled down to:
"We're down."
"It isn't our fault."
"We'll be back up when someone else gets it fixed."
You must be at least _thinking_ about how to avoid/limit this impact in the future. Why not give the user more information along these lines, and thereby position yourself as an active participant in the process at the same time? Polite helplessness is probably not what you want to project as a business, but that is what I took away from it.
[+] [-] johns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhurron|13 years ago|reply
The site is down because their provider is down. This is, as someone else stated, a fact. They told you that and that is really all they can do. They have to wait just the same as you do, for the same thing.
> This isn't Azure's fault.
Yes it is. The alternative is to pay more (a lot more) for projects to host all their own servers and storage and backups. That would be the end of a great many small to medium companies.
[+] [-] andresmh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calpaterson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edanm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|13 years ago|reply
I know its early, and they are just starting, but I just don't have confidence in Azure. Stick with AWS, Linode, Softlayer.
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hhudolet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddieroger|13 years ago|reply
It's a chance we take when we deploy to the cloud, and services like Heroku only compound it because that's an additional point of failure. I'm not sure a giant "it's their fault" finger point is the best way to handle a problem, but I assume they feel pretty powerless, so finger pointing is an option.
Good luck resuming operations. Hopefully you won't loose too many customers.
[+] [-] Yrlec|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niggler|13 years ago|reply
This extends to those services that blames AWS as well. It's not a good habit, and customers (like we saw with netflix) don't care -- all they know is that their service is down.
[+] [-] Avalaxy|13 years ago|reply
You can read more about it at www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pakeha|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] biot|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BaconJuice|13 years ago|reply
Anyways my 2 cents.
Regards.
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sologoub|13 years ago|reply
It seems like a prudent step to take.
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runesoerensen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|13 years ago|reply
My workflow is:
1. Write code on dev machine.
2. hg push to BitBucket.
3. AppHarbor hook reads new push from BitBucket and compiled on their service.
Simple quick and easy deployment!
Once thing I wish they would offer is free domains like Heroku does. Hopefully this is a feature they enable in the future.
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hhudolet|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandonfish|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgn|13 years ago|reply
Respect to you, my friend :).
[+] [-] arnorhs|13 years ago|reply
Cached copy of the front page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0vf1uUF...
Their support site: https://support.soluto.com/home (not down)
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soluto
Soluto alternatives: http://alternativeto.net/software/soluto/
[+] [-] brandonfish|13 years ago|reply
Someone pushed the wrong button there? ;)
Seriously, that just reminded me of running Windows back in the old days. You had to make sure to have the latest AV, do system upgrades all the time and of course defrag the drives... yay
[+] [-] PommeDeTerre|13 years ago|reply
I can't believe that it actually says that. It seems extremely unprofessional to me to make a statement like that.
Downtime like this is not acceptable, regardless how the service is hosted, and who is providing the hosting.
We didn't put up with this kind of outage with the "old fashioned" Web, and we shouldn't put up with it from the so-called "modern" Web, either.
[+] [-] AlexDanger|13 years ago|reply
I only make the suggestion because I was not aware of Soluto. I went to your homepage and see the outage notice and a link to support. I still have no idea what your service is about.
Perhaps not the best time to be spruiking your site and service, but any-publicity-is-good-publicity etc.
[+] [-] BaconJuice|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulsutter|13 years ago|reply
If the status page is accurate, their downtime is just poor planning on their part. Same goes for Amazon. If you're stranded in one region, you're asking for downtime.
[1] http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/service-dashboard/
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GoodIntentions|13 years ago|reply
"We're down." "It isn't our fault." "We'll be back up when someone else gets it fixed."
You must be at least _thinking_ about how to avoid/limit this impact in the future. Why not give the user more information along these lines, and thereby position yourself as an active participant in the process at the same time? Polite helplessness is probably not what you want to project as a business, but that is what I took away from it.
[+] [-] jongalloway2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] SparrowOS|13 years ago|reply
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