11:49 ET - Is Smug MugDown? Outage Update

GaryD

I'm in the same boat. I've got two current clients that I just hope won't be checking my site anytime during this outage. I also love Smugmug for many reasons, but, yikes. Hope it comes up real soon.

gman33 wrote:

The only reason I am upset now because I had a huge potential client wanting to check out my pictures today and they got the error message..I know, bad timing, and I explained to them that this has not happened for several years.



Thanks

SunGlo

Andy,

Is the vault service you offer also involved in this outage?

I have been toying with the idea of storing my RAW files in online, but quite honestly I never even considered an outage situation.

Phil

raulpesch

Stuff like this happens in de digital age and in the future this will most likely increase because of the increased number of dependencies (Smugmug photo site on Amazon back-end with Paypal payments etc.). I can live with some hours of unplanned downtime, just hope my pictures are safe.

TonyL

DrDavid wrote:

Flickr has gone down before too FWIW...

David

Oh I know.
Just an ongoing thing with the camera club I belong to.
They love flickr because its cheaper and more sociable. I always have positive things to say about SM. It still can't be beat. Once its up and running, there will be a mad rush of people to get weekend photo's up I wonder how much SM can handle.

omgitsacamera

The internet isn't perfect, if it was, we'd all be running our own websites on the scale of smugmug's in which it handles thousands of gigabytes a day.

I've been with smug for nearly a year now and this is the only time that an unplanned outage has occurred, but it is with Amazon S3, not smug. It might be luck that this happened whilst a big client was looking at a shoot or you are trying out the service, but it might be just that, luck. People shouldn't jump the gun and start canceling the service the second that it gets back online just because of this one incident. Whining and threatening to pull out isn't going to make the problem go away faster.

Anyways, I really have to commend smugmug and amazon for a quick response to the problem and I hope it gets resolved soon.

Montec

This sounds worse than originally reported

http://jmkgreen.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/amazon-s3-outage/

Jungledisk, Twitter and WordPress all being affected

flownmuse

http://www.jpgmag.com/

They seem to be down as well, I wonder if it's the same issue.

Raphy

Ya... i was gonna spend this rainy Sunday working on my online photos.... (i started to and the service got cut)... :cry :cry :cry ... Don't worry smuggy, i still love you!

gman33

This might be the best excuse to offer for FREE those red SM hats to everyone

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Andy

Montec wrote:

This sounds worse than originally reported

http://jmkgreen.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/amazon-s3-outage/

Jungledisk, Twitter and WordPress all being affected

Not worse, all the same, just that Amazon has lots of customers.

rickst

2:36 PM PDT We have restored all internal communication across Amazon S3 hosts. We have started the multi-step process to begin accepting requests across Amazon S3 locations.

hope this means we're near the end of this...

Andy

SunGlo wrote:

Andy,

Is the vault service you offer also involved in this outage?

I have been toying with the idea of storing my RAW files in online, but quite honestly I never even considered an outage situation.

Phil

Our SmugVault is on Amazon S3, and so yes it's out too. But the vault files are safe and sound.

urbanaries

I'm cool with my site being down. In two years, this is the first let's say "extended" outage, and its ok. I'm not happy, but I'm not going to overreact either.

That said, the "cartoon" currently replacing my site is quite unprofessional, it is definitely not reflective of the image I've built with my target audience and current client base.

Come on guys, I know you have a lighthearted, coy-voiced business model, but this is a bit much.

spalding12

Andy wrote:

Our SmugVault is on Amazon S3, and so yes it's out too. But the vault files are safe and sound.

how much more time, andy?
tons of folks over at nikon cafe losing money after shooting weddings yesterday

Andy

gman33 wrote:

I am really hoping that SM changes from S3.

So you'd want us to go with less reliable, less backed-up, less redundant, less speedy, less scalable and more costly infrastructure?

Say it isn't so!

DmitryS

I want to play devil's advocate.
According to Amazon's S3 service agreement:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=379654011
Amazon will credit Smugmug 25% of the total monthly charges.
Provided Smugmug points to Amazon as the reason for downtime, should Smugmug users receive credit too?
Otherwise Smugmug will even benefit financially when S3 is down.

pabster

Andy wrote:

So you'd want us to go with less reliable, less backed-up, less redundant, less speedy, less scalable and more costly infrastructure?

Say it isn't so!

What do other photo sites use for storage? There has to be other options than S3. I suggest taking a hard look. This is likely to be very costly. I'm not saying get rid of S3, but certainly redundancy needs to be in the equation.

pabster

DmitryS wrote:

I want to play devil's advocate.
According to Amazon's S3 service agreement:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=379654011
Amazon will credit Smugmug 25% of the total monthly charges.
Provided Smugmug points to Amazon as the reason for downtime, should Smugmug users receive credit too?
Otherwise Smugmug will even benefit financially when S3 is down.

Devil's Advocate, eh? Heh. I doubt they'd do it on purpose. Even though that 25% might be a nice chunk of change.

I personally am far more interested in getting the situation resolved and proactive measures to prevent such occurrences in the future than a few bucks or days of credit.

spalding12

Andy wrote:

So you'd want us to go with less reliable, less backed-up, less redundant, less speedy, less scalable and more costly infrastructure?

Say it isn't so!

obviously, I'M FINE WITH THE S3...
i'm just wondering if anyone at amazon is giving you a time estimate?

SunGlo

Andy wrote:

Our SmugVault is on Amazon S3, and so yes it's out too. But the vault files are safe and sound.

Wasn't worried about safe and sound since most services are backed up on a reqular basis. I was thinking in terms of access, slow-downs, etc.

Still, based on SM's track record (until today), I guess that it's really a non-issue.

Thanks for the answer,

Phil

kriskros

Suggestion: HOMEPAGE of users must be the default during OUTAGE
I didn't like it too. And the smugmug cartoon is still smiling.

I suggest that every member's homepage of SmugMug must be saved in a different server to be displayed whenever this occurence takes place again. An overlay OUTAGE message must be in everyone's HOMEPAGE.

Then that will be more professional looking than what we got right now.

This is taking so much time.

urbanaries wrote:

I'm cool with my site being down. In two years, this is the first let's say "extended" outage, and its ok. I'm not happy, but I'm not going to overreact either.

That said, the "cartoon" currently replacing my site is quite unprofessional, it is definitely not reflective of the image I've built with my target audience and current client base.

Come on guys, I know you have a lighthearted, coy-voiced business model, but this is a bit much.

finalblue

urbanaries wrote:

That said, the "cartoon" currently replacing my site is quite unprofessional, it is definitely not reflective of the image I've built with my target audience and current client base.

I'd agree with this. Would be great if we could specify our own page, or even just an image with our own blurb, in the event that this ever happens again.

I've been a Pro member for a few years now and this is also the first extended outage that I have experienced. I've been otherwise very happy with SM, particularly with Andy and SM support.

Andy

spalding12 wrote:

obviously, I'M FINE WITH THE S3...
i'm just wondering if anyone at amazon is giving you a time estimate?

Yes, they are updating all of use here:

http://status.aws.amazon.com/

Amazon wrote:

2:36 PM PDT We have restored all internal communication across Amazon S3 hosts. We have started the multi-step process to begin accepting requests across Amazon S3 locations.

dugmar

Andy wrote:

Yes, they are updating all of use here:

http://status.aws.amazon.com/

Can any tech geeks here translate this for the rest of us?

DrDavid

dugmar wrote:

Can any tech geeks here translate this for the rest of us?

Sure.. Something REALLY bad happened. Probably blew up a few hundred thousand dollars of cisco equipment, and now they're replacing it/fixing it.

Almost fixed though!

David

1pocket

Andy wrote:

Yes, they are updating all of use here:

http://status.aws.amazon.com/

Andy,
This link goes to a list of something, but I do not see any reference to snugmug at that link. Where do we go from there??

Andy

urbanaries wrote:

That said, the "cartoon" currently replacing my site is quite unprofessional, it is definitely not reflective of the image I've built with my target audience and current client base.

Come on guys, I know you have a lighthearted, coy-voiced business model, but this is a bit much.

We don't think so, Sorry We're not some stuffed shirts. I *love* the graphic. Still, I love these, too:





Saw this on youtube once:


I *love* Crumpler's:


and I love ours compared to: :snore

Andy

1pocket wrote:

Andy,
This link goes to a list of something, but I do not see any reference to snugmug at that link. Where do we go from there??

You don't. That's where Amazon is posting their updates to the issue.

Full SmugMug Status here: http://smugmug.wordpress.com/

cdonovan

What I find cool is that photos that I posted on the dgrin website that are hosted in my smug gallery are not showing up as x's!

I'm not thrilled about the cartoon either....how bout another contest!!!

rickst

3:07 PM PDT We are attempting to bring EU back up now, followed by our US locations. EU will be first due to the smaller number of hosts. No data has been lost during this incident.

Sounds like it will be a while yet...