I can surely implement one of your suggestions but I moved to SMUGMUG to simplify workflow and improve the customer experience. My question was less about this outage and more about next time. I'd like to understand if this is once a year or once a month. Hopefully, my previous questions can be addressed once the incident is resolved.
Less than once a month, more than once a year.
Less than once a year if you count a repeated outage during a single day like this. Very rare.
I recently enabled and configured my pro account and have made good progress until today which has been an excercise in frustration. My customer is waiting to view their wedding photos and I'm frankly hesitant to enable the link given the instability.
-Are these outages common?
-What is the SMUGMUG's SLA?
-Do you provide availability metrics to your customers?
-If the problem is a core server, why is there no standby?
-What components are not redundant?
I understand the infrastructure challenge you face and know you will resolve this problem but I would like to better understand my exposure so I can address the concerns of my customers.
thegrepper,
As a smugmug customer for around 2 years now, I can stay the availability/uptime of smugmug is second to none IMO.
While I am not a heavy uploader like some other users, I am someone who helps out with customisation and development of 3rd party apps... I can tell you that it is very rare that I couldn't access smugmug (outside of scheduled outages) and I am talking about frequent access between 7am-2am (Australian EST).
Third party validation
I have been a Smugmug user for a year and counting. I use the site on an almost daily basis. I can only remember one other instance of the site being "temporarily unavailable." The people & tech support have always been more than prompt, helpful, and otherwise amazing. So for the moment, stop griping, let them fix it, and thank them when it's all done for taking care of the matter in their usual prompt & amazing way.
I'd bring you guys coffee & chocolate if I weren't on the other side of the country.
I can surely implement one of your suggestions but I moved to SMUGMUG to simplify workflow and improve the customer experience. My question was less about this outage and more about next time. I'd like to understand if this is once a year or once a month. Hopefully, my previous questions can be addressed once the incident is resolved.
these sort of non-scheduled outages are definately not the norm and I can't remember from memory many that have been outside a planned window.
Just want to let you know that for mission critical, there are many ways around non redundant things :-) Since I work in IT as a Director and Technical Architect for a very very large hospital (read, 24x7x365, no outages allowed when patient data is on-line :-)
--Switches. Well, yes and no. You can certainly have a hot standby system on a separate switch altogether. This can be costly but if you really have to be up, this is one way to do it.
--Database. Well, many options out there, but my favorite is the expensive solution from Golden Gate Software. They can do magical things with an SQL database... replay, caching, duplication, basic message routing etc. Look em up if you are interested in TRANSACTION level redundancy.
--Servers. Well, start out with teaming built into Windows itself. Nothing like having two NICs on the same machine connected to TWO SEPARATE switches.
--IP... BigIP from f5. Nuff said :-) They are the classic way that many people still do redundancy. We use em, as do many many other people.
--For monitoring I love InterMapper from Dartware... very cheap alternative to HP OpenView or Tivoli. I think it is MUCH better than What's Up Gold which is another favorite out there.
I may be preaching to the choir but in case you didn;t consider any of the above, I hope it helped a bit :-) You are of course welcome to tap my brain for anything IT that I can help with. For credentials I am a CCIE, MCSE, CISSP, and a few others under my belt... have designed very large networks (and implemented them as well and operated them) and recently deployed a 20 node DWDM fiber ring around Manhattan.
Hopefully some of our long-term customers will weigh in here with an unbiased opinion, but the view from the inside looks something like this:
- These outages ARE NOT common. In terms of non-scheduled downtime, we aim to have less than one hour (99.99%) uptime. Last year (2006) we didn't make it because of one prolonged outage due to a distributed denial of service attack, but excluding that one, we were will within range. Previous years we made it with plenty of room.
- We don't provide an SLA. You're the first one to ask for one. I'm not opposed to implementing one, but we'd need to think about how to do it. Some estimate of the time down, multiplied by your average sales dollars per second might do the trick, but we'll have to talk about that. I'm not sure our service is really high-dollar enough to warrant an SLA, but maybe I'm wrong?
- We don't provide availability metrics, and again, you're the first to ask. We'd certainly do so if we had an SLA in place.
- We have multiple pieces of hardware standing by, but I'm not about to replace a piece of hardware without first verifying that it's the root cause. If it wasn't, I just wasted an hour or two doing nothing useful. We're still diagnosing the problem, but we're getting closer.
- At this point, I believe the only non-redundant components are core networking switches. (This is a common component to not be redundant - every major internet brand suffers from outages due to network switch failures) All of our routers, servers, and storage are redundant. Many of them are automatic fail-over, too, so you'll never notice an outage. With critical data, though, it's essential to have manual failover so we don't introduce data corruption due to split-brain or time-based latency.
When you compare our uptime to any major brand, including Google, eBay, Hotmail, or Amazon, you'll find that we're comparable. No-one meets 99.999% uptime, and most don't even come close to 99.99%.
We're doing the best we can, of course, and will continue to think about how we can improve.
Thanks for the questions, hopefully some third party validation will happen with our customers, but it's possible my world view differs from theirs.
Less than once a year if you count a repeated outage during a single day like this. Very rare.
Don
Don,
Thanks for this and the previous detailed post. I understand the challenges and really appreciate your response given the current situation. The one thing that will absolutely keep me as a customer is your responsiveness and the SMUGMUG community.
I think that you already answered your own questions :-)
If you are a Pro, you should have already mailed a DVD to your customer pronto. Nothing ever works perfectly all the time, so you must have options you can control yourself. I think your best backup is your own site and your own DVDs to send out via snail mail if needed.
Seriously, pop some small pics on to a free Flicker acct or whatever else right away and get your customer looking at the images. Worry about Smug coming back later.
Cheers
MG
Maybe it shouldn't have but just passing by this post really struck my nerve as being pretty much uncalled for but than maybe your just having a really sore day... or maybe it's just me reading your post wrong. Whatever.
As a PRO hosting with a smugmug PRO account I would NOT just pop some pics up on flicker... geez. And not all PROS including myself give DVD's to clients - hello. We trust and rely on smugmug. Customers will and do understand downtime. They may not like it... hey neither do we... but stuff happens and everyone knows that.
That said... My 2 cents: Don't worry. Smugmug is rarely down but when it happens they have it fixed asap. I can assure you anytime and everytime I've ever encountered any problem with my PRO Smugmug they reply in a very PRO manner (understatement because they'll work 24/7 until it's fixed) and have me up and going in no time flat. They really do bust their buts for every customer - Pro or not. Thanks smugmug!!! I know your doing all you can to get this issue straightened out. I don't like it either but Thank God I don't have to figure it out... that's why I use smugmug for my host!!! Andy once said something along the lines of... "Your a photographer so go shoot some pics and Leave the worries to us." I encountered a problem moving 2 pics today... so I e-mailed the help desk and posted on dgrin... then went shooting. When I got home they'd figured it all out and my pics were found :ivar
Well, actually a ONCE IN A WHENEVER IT HAPPENS kind of outage. I can tell you the last one was over a year ago but then, we can have 10 in the next week... that is life :-)
If purely from an ESTABLISHED record from past experience/actual happenings, it is VERY VERY RARE.
Given that, I can say that Smugmug is not yet an Amazon nor an eBay, nor Google (wow, imagine?) so their budget and funds for THAT LEVEL of redundancy may be not here yet... (Don?) .
Imagine that eBay and Google have BILLIONS of dollars in funds JUST TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON all the time. It is their most important business and they are HUGE.
Don, can you share your traffic stats? I bet compared to Google, they pale. But, I think Smugmug will get there one day. And when they do, they will be more like Google when it comes to redundancy. Or maybe Don and crew are ready to steal all our money and bail!!!!
Cheers!!
MG
P.S. I do have my own hosting site and suggest you do the same for your business. Use Smugmug as your main or not, but definitely back one up with the other.
I have my site on standby just in case. If I had customers waiting for a shoot, I would post them on my domain ... but it is rare enough I have never had to use that.
Same goes for if you use your domain as primary and Smug as backup. Your ISP can go down while Smug is up.
I can surely implement one of your suggestions but I moved to SMUGMUG to simplify workflow and improve the customer experience. My question was less about this outage and more about next time. I'd like to understand if this is once a year or once a month. Hopefully, my previous questions can be addressed once the incident is resolved.
Yup Cindy, you misread my post :-) I guarantee you I am having a great day. But here comes another insult (well, if you read it wrong that is) You are NO PRO if you are NOT giving DVDs to your customers when they NEED the pictures and your hosting site is down. Customer is KING... and that means handing out your right arm if you have to. Plain and simple.
Look at it this way... those Sports Illustrated PROs (and they are real PROs in my book) never even get to see their best pictures first in most cases. They are handing out their CF cards to runners and they don't even get to "chimp" their images.
Don;t worry, your images are perfectly safe ... What is wrong with giving out DVD's in an emergency? or not? :-)
Maybe you are having a bad day? If not, good, if so, my apologies for getting you hyped enough to pay attention to an idiot like me !! :-)
Maybe it shouldn't have but just passing by this post really struck my nerve as being pretty much uncalled for but than maybe your just having a really sore day... or maybe it's just me reading your post wrong. Whatever.
As a PRO hosting with a smugmug PRO account I would NOT just pop some pics up on flicker... geez. And not all PROS including myself give DVD's to clients - hello. We trust and rely on smugmug. Customers will and do understand downtime. They may not like it... hey neither do we... but stuff happens and everyone knows that.
That said... My 2 cents: Don't worry. Smugmug is rarely down but when it happens they have it fixed asap. I can assure you anytime and everytime I've ever encountered any problem with my PRO Smugmug they reply in a very PRO manner (understatement because they'll work 24/7 until it's fixed) and have me up and going in no time flat. They really do bust their buts for every customer - Pro or not. Thanks smugmug!!! I know your doing all you can to get this issue straightened out. I don't like it either but Thank God I don't have to figure it out... that's why I use smugmug for my host!!! Andy once said something along the lines of... "Your a photographer so go shoot some pics and Leave the worries to us." I encountered a problem moving 2 pics today... so I e-mailed the help desk and posted on dgrin... then went shooting. When I got home they'd figured it all out and my pics were found :ivar
I forgot to mention, how many companies would have their CEO on the forum answering any and all questions during an outage?
Thats soooo nice..... I’m used to dealing with 3rd party outsourced customer service representatives who don’t speak any language, don’t know anything and who don’t care. I’ll stick With SmugMug….
If you are a Pro, you should have already mailed a DVD to your customer pronto. Nothing ever works perfectly all the time, so you must have options you can control yourself.
Except that smugmug is infinitely more reliable and speedier than the mail, or even overnight delivery. By the time anyone burns a DVD, gets it in the overnight package, spends $8 or whatever it is to ship it, smugmug's been up for hours.
That and having a redundant site as backup all seem like major overkill.
P.S. I do have my own hosting site and suggest you do the same for your business. Use Smugmug as your main or not, but definitely back one up with the other.
I have my site on standby just in case. If I had customers waiting for a shoot, I would post them on my domain ... but it is rare enough I have never had to use that.
Same goes for if you use your domain as primary and Smug as backup. Your ISP can go down while Smug is up.
Manny,
Again, good advice. I do have my own domain and do have a selection of photos available for viewing. Workflow does not permit maintaing two sites with all photos. The other objective of moving to SMUGMUG was to add a shopping cart for family and friends to order prints - I don't plan to implement that functionality on my site for redundancy. There is also no practical way for me to monitor SMUGMUG's service and implement my "standby" should an outage occur. I understand these things happen and hope they are infrequent. Thanks again...
Except that smugmug is infinitely more reliable and speedier than the mail, or even overnight delivery. By the time anyone burns a DVD, gets it in the overnight package, spends $8 or whatever it is to ship it, smugmug's been up for hours.
That and having a redundant site as backup all seem like major overkill.
David:
The Sports Illustrated shooters mentioned in the post that inspired this don't exactly rely on the mail, but it still seems like a pretty good tip gleaned from the big time pros.
Sometimes a client wants the photos quickly (like getting the CF cards at an NFL game)-- or in a day or two. If they're local, a DVD is a nice backup-- even in the rare chance smugmug (or your electricity-- yeah, yeah, I can still get a broadband connection if the power is out, but some folks can't) goes out-- as long as the servers have power of course. Plus it's a nice touch for the client.
EDIT: right after I posted this-- went to my smugmug site and it's down again. If I had something due to the client in the morning-- a DVD seems like a good option. Better than staying awake to wait for the site to come back up. That's all I'm saying.
You are NO PRO if you are NOT giving DVDs to your customers when they NEED the pictures and your hosting site is down.
Don;t worry, your images are perfectly safe ... What is wrong with giving out DVD's in an emergency? or not? :-)
Maybe you are having a bad day? If not, good, if so, my apologies for getting you hyped enough to pay attention to an idiot like me !! :-)
Cheers!
MG
There's not a thing wrong with giving out DVD's. I do whenever needed but I've never needed to because smugmug was down. In this case if it's only because smugmug is down... I'm quite confident that by the time I burned the DVD and got it to the customer... smugmug will have been long allready back on-line and I would have wasted time with burning and delievery and fretting all for nothing... besides it's still easier in 'most' cases for them to head to the website verses viewing a dvd.
flicker: Same as above. I'm sure it would likely take me longer to get the pics uploaded and inform the customer of the new site, place, etc to view them... best to just hang in there for the moment unless smugmug advises it's something extremly terrible with a potential downtime of more than 24 hours... which I don't recall ever happening.
Anyhow my point was he was posting as a new smugmug customer... worried about if this is a normal problem, how it would effect his customers... etc. I just thought you post sounded like a put down to both smugmug (their service) and to the new pro customer (implying they weren't a pro).
My day's been great but time to turn in for some zzzzzzzzz's... I'm confident the smugmug team will work this all out and grateful I don't have to loose any sleep over it
We're cool Cindy... like I said, I was basically being honest to the NEW person... and realistic. If you;re a PRO, you must have options is all I said. Heck, I back Smugmug like the best of them... and definitely take nothing away from them. Heck of a great site. My position is from a point of view of what - if. I guess you understand my point. I certainly understand yours.
There's not a thing wrong with giving out DVD's. I do whenever needed but I've never needed to because smugmug was down. In this case if it's only because smugmug is down... I'm quite confident that by the time I burned the DVD and got it to the customer... smugmug will have been long allready back on-line and I would have wasted time with burning and delievery and fretting all for nothing... besides it's still easier in 'most' cases for them to head to the website verses viewing a dvd.
flicker: Same as above. I'm sure it would likely take me longer to get the pics uploaded and inform the customer of the new site, place, etc to view them... best to just hang in there for the moment unless smugmug advises it's something extremly terrible with a potential downtime of more than 24 hours... which I don't recall ever happening.
Anyhow my point was he was posting as a new smugmug customer... worried about if this is a normal problem, how it would effect his customers... etc. I just thought you post sounded like a put down to both smugmug (their service) and to the new pro customer (implying they weren't a pro).
My day's been great but time to turn in for some zzzzzzzzz's... I'm confident the smugmug team will work this all out and grateful I don't have to loose any sleep over it
Sorry, but I had to chime in on this thread. Smugmug rarely has problems, and never any problem that has bothered me prior to today. In fact the only reason I usually know about any smugmug problems is because of all the threads that pop up on dgrin.
Then when ever there is a problem that I read on the dgrin threads, I am amused at how fired up people get for what always seems to me to be minor issue. But today through unfortunate timing on my sister-in-law's part she sent out an email to all her family and friends to announce their much-anticipated new smugmug site where everyone could go and see pictures of their new daughter.
Normally I could careless if a site where my sister-in-law's family pics are hosted goes down, but I spent a month convincing my sister-in-law and her family that smugmug is where they need to go for photo hosting, I told them how much smugmug rocks, how if you have any problem what so ever just email help@ and you would get a response almost instantly. Then she proudly announces their new site just before smugmug goes down. This was my first smugmug site sale; the first person I was able to convince to sign up with smugmug.
Yes it was just bad timing and bad luck, and I still think smugmug rocks, I will continue to support smugmug and tell everyone its the best place to host your pics. Its just that now understand a little better why people get so fired up when smugmug has problems and it effects their site.
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera" - Dorothea Lange
0
Options
Matthew SavilleRegistered Users, Retired ModPosts: 3,352Major grins
edited January 16, 2007
Let me preface this by saying that at the end of this month I will have been with Smugmug for 3 years, most of it as a Pro account holder.
I could count the number of crashes that gave me trouble on one hand. And I spend a LOT of time on my Smugmug.
The number of crashes that gave my customers trouble, thankfully, is zero.
I know this is not the case with EVERY Smugmug user, but I just thought I'd weigh in. Smugmug is above and beyond the best value there is, none else really comes close at all. Sure you can pay a boat load to have your own private website with all sorts of complicated backups, but my Smugmug practically pays for itself every year with the referral system. I just can't beat that, so I'm not going to complain about what I've got if the grass isn't greener anywhere else!
-Matt-
[EDIT] This is always the ironic part. Each of the few times that I can remember Smugmug going down, it always ended like this- Smugmug is back up before I can even finish going on the forums to see what's happening. Back to work, everybody! Shoo!
Sorry, but I had to chime in on this thread. Smugmug rarely has problems, and never any problem that has bothered me prior to today. In fact the only reason I usually know about any smugmug problems is because of all the threads that pop up on dgrin.
Then when ever there is a problem that I read on the dgrin threads, I am amused at how fired up people get for what always seems to me to be minor issue. But today through unfortunate timing on my sister-in-law's part she sent out an email to all her family and friends to announce their much-anticipated new smugmug site where everyone could go and see pictures of their new daughter.
Normally I could careless if a site where my sister-in-law's family pics are hosted goes down, but I spent a month convincing my sister-in-law and her family that smugmug is where they need to go for photo hosting, I told them how much smugmug rocks, how if you have any problem what so ever just email help@ and you would get a response almost instantly. Then she proudly announces their new site just before smugmug goes down. This was my first smugmug site sale; the first person I was able to convince to sign up with smugmug.
Yes it was just bad timing and bad luck, and I still think smugmug rocks, I will continue to support smugmug and tell everyone its the best place to host your pics. Its just that now understand a little better why people get so fired up when smugmug has problems and it effects their site.
Aha! I think we know who caused our outage - it was greenpea's sister-in-law!
Seriously, sorry about the timing.
We're back up (again) for the time being. I'm watching it closely, we made some changes, and I'm hoping we're stable again. But if I were a betting man, I'd doubt it.
I think that you already answered your own questions :-)
If you are a Pro, you should have already mailed a DVD to your customer pronto. Nothing ever works perfectly all the time, so you must have options you can control yourself. I think your best backup is your own site and your own DVDs to send out via snail mail if needed.
Seriously, pop some small pics on to a free Flicker acct or whatever else right away and get your customer looking at the images. Worry about Smug coming back later.
Cheers
MG
Manny you clearly don't understand the way professional event photography works. Mailing DVDs (at no additional cost) so clients can do their own printing? LMAO!! A fully functional (with fullfillment functionality I assume) alternate site while still using (and paying) smugmug? ROFLMAO!!! Yeah, I'll just create a web site with all of the free time I have left over from my 60-hour work weeks (all photographers are computer tech weenies, btw). Flickr? Please!!!! Perhaps you should constrain your condescending remarks for those subjects within your area of expertise, such as redundant network switching in very, very, very, very large hospitals.
FWIW, my paying customers get a CD with a PS-generated web gallery, so they can at least view their images off-line if smugmug is down. That doesn't give them a printing option, though (without ponying up significant $$$) and it doesn't do anything for the potentially hundreds of event guests who would view the images and hopefully buy prints. But I suppose they should they ALL get high-res DVDs.
...I spent a month convincing my sister-in-law and her family that smugmug is where they need to go for photo hosting... the first person I was able to convince to sign up with smugmug...
Same (almost) story here...of all days to try to convince 1)cousin, and 2) a close friend who just crossed the Pacific by sailboat (and is very dissatisfied with his yahoo picture site) to open Smugmug accounts, I had to pick a day when smugmug's service went down! Drat.
One thing that did (still does) trouble me about the "outage"...when I discovered my site was down, I immediately went to Dgrin to find out what was going on. [Was there a scheduled event taking place that I was not aware of? (I could have postponed my "promotional" efforts if I'd known)....or was it an unplanned, spontaneous outage?...to be honest, I'm still not 100% sure I know the answer, although I'm leaning toward the latter.]
It wasn't all that easy to figure it out (non-geek credentials here). Lots of the posts were tongue in cheek humor, etc., and lots were more technical than my pay grade understands. And I could not seem to find much that really appeared "official" as to what was actually happening. Andy's bio identifies him, at least, as a "Smugmug House Pro", but some others who I believe are legitimate spokespersons for smugmug have bio descriptions that are too obscure to be certain they have any real affiliation with Smugmug.
Unless one is a frequent Dgrin user, it would be difficult to know who to "listen to" about the particulars of such an event.
Bottom line, whenever there's an event like this, people just want to know what's going on, and want the information to come from an informed, "official" source. Perhaps that could be done on Dgrin with a separate "Announcement/Status" thread that only the "official" spokespersons can post to???? (just a thought), and let the rest of us rant, help, compliment, or otherwise blow off steam elsewhere (as in the current thread format).
CLARIFICATION TO ALL: Please stop assuming things ... I NEVER suggested that you give away the original pictures, what kind of pro would do that? It all depends on the situation... If National Geographic wanted to give me $10,000 for one of my NEFs and I gigured it was a good deal, they'd get the DVD with the NEF... it is not unlikely that someone would be in that situation. Even for a pro, you could manage to sell the rights for a price... everything has a cost to it. so that is not entirely impossible. I figured this was self explanatory... I can not believe that youwould think I meant originals? for them to print? Why would you assume that? If you and Cindy assuemd as much, that is entirely your fault :-)) I NEVER meant that... of course I meant something for them to see... a locked down, small slideshow with lockouts, watermarks whatever... I don;t care. My point was to make sure the customer sees the images. ALso, you never want to tell a customer you can;t do something such as not being able to show them their pictures because your site is down. You should have a backup is all I am saying.
Once again, why did you assume I meant originals for them to print on their own? Curious....
Manny you clearly don't understand the way professional event photography works. Mailing DVDs (at no additional cost) so clients can do their own printing? LMAO!! A fully functional (with fullfillment functionality I assume) alternate site while still using (and paying) smugmug? ROFLMAO!!! Yeah, I'll just create a web site with all of the free time I have left over from my 60-hour work weeks (all photographers are computer tech weenies, btw). Flickr? Please!!!! Perhaps you should constrain your condescending remarks for those subjects within your area of expertise, such as redundant network switching in very, very, very, very large hospitals.
FWIW, my paying customers get a CD with a PS-generated web gallery, so they can at least view their images off-line if smugmug is down. That doesn't give them a printing option, though (without ponying up significant $$$) and it doesn't do anything for the potentially hundreds of event guests who would view the images and hopefully buy prints. But I suppose they should they ALL get high-res DVDs.
Comments
Less than once a month, more than once a year.
Less than once a year if you count a repeated outage during a single day like this. Very rare.
Don
thegrepper,
As a smugmug customer for around 2 years now, I can stay the availability/uptime of smugmug is second to none IMO.
While I am not a heavy uploader like some other users, I am someone who helps out with customisation and development of 3rd party apps... I can tell you that it is very rare that I couldn't access smugmug (outside of scheduled outages) and I am talking about frequent access between 7am-2am (Australian EST).
Cheers,
David
SmugMug API Developer
My Photos
I have been a Smugmug user for a year and counting. I use the site on an almost daily basis. I can only remember one other instance of the site being "temporarily unavailable." The people & tech support have always been more than prompt, helpful, and otherwise amazing. So for the moment, stop griping, let them fix it, and thank them when it's all done for taking care of the matter in their usual prompt & amazing way.
I'd bring you guys coffee & chocolate if I weren't on the other side of the country.
EDIT: and the site is FAST - faster than norm
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
these sort of non-scheduled outages are definately not the norm and I can't remember from memory many that have been outside a planned window.
Cheers,
david
SmugMug API Developer
My Photos
Just want to let you know that for mission critical, there are many ways around non redundant things :-) Since I work in IT as a Director and Technical Architect for a very very large hospital (read, 24x7x365, no outages allowed when patient data is on-line :-)
--Switches. Well, yes and no. You can certainly have a hot standby system on a separate switch altogether. This can be costly but if you really have to be up, this is one way to do it.
--Database. Well, many options out there, but my favorite is the expensive solution from Golden Gate Software. They can do magical things with an SQL database... replay, caching, duplication, basic message routing etc. Look em up if you are interested in TRANSACTION level redundancy.
--Servers. Well, start out with teaming built into Windows itself. Nothing like having two NICs on the same machine connected to TWO SEPARATE switches.
--IP... BigIP from f5. Nuff said :-) They are the classic way that many people still do redundancy. We use em, as do many many other people.
--For monitoring I love InterMapper from Dartware... very cheap alternative to HP OpenView or Tivoli. I think it is MUCH better than What's Up Gold which is another favorite out there.
I may be preaching to the choir but in case you didn;t consider any of the above, I hope it helped a bit :-) You are of course welcome to tap my brain for anything IT that I can help with. For credentials I am a CCIE, MCSE, CISSP, and a few others under my belt... have designed very large networks (and implemented them as well and operated them) and recently deployed a 20 node DWDM fiber ring around Manhattan.
Good luck with your repairs :-)
Cheers
Manny
http://manny.smugmug.com/
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Don,
Thanks for this and the previous detailed post. I understand the challenges and really appreciate your response given the current situation. The one thing that will absolutely keep me as a customer is your responsiveness and the SMUGMUG community.
Maybe it shouldn't have but just passing by this post
As a PRO hosting with a smugmug PRO account I would NOT just pop some pics up on flicker... geez. And not all PROS including myself give DVD's to clients - hello. We trust and rely on smugmug. Customers will and do understand downtime. They may not like it... hey neither do we... but stuff happens and everyone knows that.
That said... My 2 cents: Don't worry. Smugmug is rarely down but when it happens they have it fixed asap. I can assure you anytime and everytime I've ever encountered any problem with my PRO Smugmug they reply in a very PRO manner (understatement because they'll work 24/7 until it's fixed) and have me up and going in no time flat. They really do bust their buts for every customer - Pro or not. Thanks smugmug!!! I know your doing all you can to get this issue straightened out. I don't like it either but Thank God I don't have to figure it out... that's why I use smugmug for my host!!! Andy once said something along the lines of... "Your a photographer so go shoot some pics and Leave the worries to us." I encountered a problem moving 2 pics today... so I e-mailed the help desk and posted on dgrin... then went shooting. When I got home they'd figured it all out and my pics were found
If purely from an ESTABLISHED record from past experience/actual happenings, it is VERY VERY RARE.
Given that, I can say that Smugmug is not yet an Amazon nor an eBay, nor Google (wow, imagine?) so their budget and funds for THAT LEVEL of redundancy may be not here yet... (Don?)
Imagine that eBay and Google have BILLIONS of dollars in funds JUST TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON all the time. It is their most important business and they are HUGE.
Don, can you share your traffic stats? I bet compared to Google, they pale. But, I think Smugmug will get there one day. And when they do, they will be more like Google when it comes to redundancy. Or maybe Don and crew are ready to steal all our money and bail!!!!
Cheers!!
MG
P.S. I do have my own hosting site and suggest you do the same for your business. Use Smugmug as your main or not, but definitely back one up with the other.
I have my site on standby just in case. If I had customers waiting for a shoot, I would post them on my domain ... but it is rare enough I have never had to use that.
Same goes for if you use your domain as primary and Smug as backup. Your ISP can go down while Smug is up.
http://manny.smugmug.com/
Smug since 2006
SmugMug Help
PhotoscapeDesign
Thanks for your efforts to get things running smoothly again!
Look at it this way... those Sports Illustrated PROs (and they are real PROs in my book) never even get to see their best pictures first in most cases. They are handing out their CF cards to runners and they don't even get to "chimp" their images.
Don;t worry, your images are perfectly safe ... What is wrong with giving out DVD's in an emergency? or not? :-)
Maybe you are having a bad day? If not, good, if so, my apologies for getting you hyped enough to pay attention to an idiot like me !! :-)
Cheers!
MG
http://manny.smugmug.com/
I’m used to dealing with 3rd party outsourced customer service representatives who don’t speak any language, don’t know anything and who don’t care.
I’ll stick With SmugMug….
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Wow-- harsh but true. Good tip too.
Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
website blog instagram facebook g+
That and having a redundant site as backup all seem like major overkill.
Dgrin FAQ | Me | Workshops
Manny,
Again, good advice. I do have my own domain and do have a selection of photos available for viewing. Workflow does not permit maintaing two sites with all photos. The other objective of moving to SMUGMUG was to add a shopping cart for family and friends to order prints - I don't plan to implement that functionality on my site for redundancy. There is also no practical way for me to monitor SMUGMUG's service and implement my "standby" should an outage occur. I understand these things happen and hope they are infrequent. Thanks again...
The Sports Illustrated shooters mentioned in the post that inspired this don't exactly rely on the mail, but it still seems like a pretty good tip gleaned from the big time pros.
Sometimes a client wants the photos quickly (like getting the CF cards at an NFL game)-- or in a day or two. If they're local, a DVD is a nice backup-- even in the rare chance smugmug (or your electricity-- yeah, yeah, I can still get a broadband connection if the power is out, but some folks can't) goes out-- as long as the servers have power of course. Plus it's a nice touch for the client.
EDIT: right after I posted this-- went to my smugmug site and it's down again. If I had something due to the client in the morning-- a DVD seems like a good option. Better than staying awake to wait for the site to come back up. That's all I'm saying.
Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
website blog instagram facebook g+
There's not a thing wrong with giving out DVD's. I do whenever needed but I've never needed to because smugmug was down. In this case if it's only because smugmug is down... I'm quite confident that by the time I burned the DVD and got it to the customer... smugmug will have been long allready back on-line and I would have wasted time with burning and delievery and fretting all for nothing... besides it's still easier in 'most' cases for them to head to the website
flicker: Same as above. I'm sure it would likely take me longer to get the pics uploaded and inform the customer of the new site, place, etc to view them... best to just hang in there for the moment unless smugmug advises it's something extremly terrible with a potential downtime of more than 24 hours... which I don't recall ever happening.
Anyhow my point was he was posting as a new smugmug customer... worried about if this is a normal problem, how it would effect his customers... etc. I just thought you post sounded like a put down to both smugmug (their service) and to the new pro customer (implying they weren't a pro).
My day's been great but time to turn in for some zzzzzzzzz's... I'm confident the smugmug team will work this all out and grateful I don't have to loose any sleep over it
Cheers
Manny
http://manny.smugmug.com/
Then when ever there is a problem that I read on the dgrin threads, I am amused at how fired up people get for what always seems to me to be minor issue. But today through unfortunate timing on my sister-in-law's part she sent out an email to all her family and friends to announce their much-anticipated new smugmug site where everyone could go and see pictures of their new daughter.
Normally I could careless if a site where my sister-in-law's family pics are hosted goes down, but I spent a month convincing my sister-in-law and her family that smugmug is where they need to go for photo hosting, I told them how much smugmug rocks, how if you have any problem what so ever just email help@ and you would get a response almost instantly. Then she proudly announces their new site just before smugmug goes down. This was my first smugmug site sale; the first person I was able to convince to sign up with smugmug.
Yes it was just bad timing and bad luck, and I still think smugmug rocks, I will continue to support smugmug and tell everyone its the best place to host your pics. Its just that now understand a little better why people get so fired up when smugmug has problems and it effects their site.
initialphotography.smugmug.com
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera" - Dorothea Lange
I could count the number of crashes that gave me trouble on one hand. And I spend a LOT of time on my Smugmug.
The number of crashes that gave my customers trouble, thankfully, is zero.
I know this is not the case with EVERY Smugmug user, but I just thought I'd weigh in. Smugmug is above and beyond the best value there is, none else really comes close at all. Sure you can pay a boat load to have your own private website with all sorts of complicated backups, but my Smugmug practically pays for itself every year with the referral system. I just can't beat that, so I'm not going to complain about what I've got if the grass isn't greener anywhere else!
-Matt-
[EDIT] This is always the ironic part. Each of the few times that I can remember Smugmug going down, it always ended like this- Smugmug is back up before I can even finish going on the forums to see what's happening. Back to work, everybody! Shoo!
My SmugMug Portfolio • My Astro-Landscape Photo Blog • Dgrin Weddings Forum
i only noticed the outage about 20 minutes ago...
but wanted to report that my end, things are up.
even the main smugmug site is working again.
2 minutes ago i refreshed and got a "service unavailable"
Aha! I think we know who caused our outage - it was greenpea's sister-in-law!
Seriously, sorry about the timing.
We're back up (again) for the time being. I'm watching it closely, we made some changes, and I'm hoping we're stable again. But if I were a betting man, I'd doubt it.
More as I get it...
Don
Manny you clearly don't understand the way professional event photography works. Mailing DVDs (at no additional cost) so clients can do their own printing? LMAO!! A fully functional (with fullfillment functionality I assume) alternate site while still using (and paying) smugmug? ROFLMAO!!! Yeah, I'll just create a web site with all of the free time I have left over from my 60-hour work weeks (all photographers are computer tech weenies, btw). Flickr? Please!!!! Perhaps you should constrain your condescending remarks for those subjects within your area of expertise, such as redundant network switching in very, very, very, very large hospitals.
FWIW, my paying customers get a CD with a PS-generated web gallery, so they can at least view their images off-line if smugmug is down. That doesn't give them a printing option, though (without ponying up significant $$$) and it doesn't do anything for the potentially hundreds of event guests who would view the images and hopefully buy prints. But I suppose they should they ALL get high-res DVDs.
Same (almost) story here...of all days to try to convince 1)cousin, and 2) a close friend who just crossed the Pacific by sailboat (and is very dissatisfied with his yahoo picture site) to open Smugmug accounts, I had to pick a day when smugmug's service went down! Drat.
One thing that did (still does) trouble me about the "outage"...when I discovered my site was down, I immediately went to Dgrin to find out what was going on. [Was there a scheduled event taking place that I was not aware of? (I could have postponed my "promotional" efforts if I'd known)....or was it an unplanned, spontaneous outage?...to be honest, I'm still not 100% sure I know the answer, although I'm leaning toward the latter.]
It wasn't all that easy to figure it out (non-geek credentials here). Lots of the posts were tongue in cheek humor, etc., and lots were more technical than my pay grade understands. And I could not seem to find much that really appeared "official" as to what was actually happening. Andy's bio identifies him, at least, as a "Smugmug House Pro", but some others who I believe are legitimate spokespersons for smugmug have bio descriptions that are too obscure to be certain they have any real affiliation with Smugmug.
Unless one is a frequent Dgrin user, it would be difficult to know who to "listen to" about the particulars of such an event.
Bottom line, whenever there's an event like this, people just want to know what's going on, and want the information to come from an informed, "official" source. Perhaps that could be done on Dgrin with a separate "Announcement/Status" thread that only the "official" spokespersons can post to???? (just a thought), and let the rest of us rant, help, compliment, or otherwise blow off steam elsewhere (as in the current thread format).
CLARIFICATION TO ALL: Please stop assuming things ... I NEVER suggested that you give away the original pictures, what kind of pro would do that? It all depends on the situation... If National Geographic wanted to give me $10,000 for one of my NEFs and I gigured it was a good deal, they'd get the DVD with the NEF... it is not unlikely that someone would be in that situation. Even for a pro, you could manage to sell the rights for a price... everything has a cost to it. so that is not entirely impossible. I figured this was self explanatory... I can not believe that youwould think I meant originals? for them to print? Why would you assume that? If you and Cindy assuemd as much, that is entirely your fault :-)) I NEVER meant that... of course I meant something for them to see... a locked down, small slideshow with lockouts, watermarks whatever... I don;t care. My point was to make sure the customer sees the images. ALso, you never want to tell a customer you can;t do something such as not being able to show them their pictures because your site is down. You should have a backup is all I am saying.
Once again, why did you assume I meant originals for them to print on their own? Curious....
Cheers!
Manny
http://manny.smugmug.com/