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!!!
Really, life's too short to worry about stiff, boring outage messages. Let's focus more on making it so you don't see the outage graphic (our really cool ones, not the stiff, boring :snore corporate ones) much at all, mkay?
This has moved from a routine outage, to a more major incedent taking down several site in addition to Smugmug.
I dont ask this of SmugMug, but do expect them to pass along updates from Amazon as to what the heck is happening. It looks like about 9 hours down - a bit more significant than a minor interruption.
We all have lost a day's business or enjoyment due to this - I think Amazon should refund our charges for the day.........
Z
It is the purpose of life that each of us strives to become actually what he is potentially. We should be obsessed with stretching towards that goal through the world we inhabit.
Call me dumb and non technical - but why if this is all to do with amazon has the amazon shopping site continued to function normally - are their phots somehow better protected???
i have a high value auction supposed to be ending soon and this outage has potentially cost me a couple of thousand if the last bidders cannot see the photos on ebay that were all hosted here at smugmug.
We all have lost a day's business or enjoyment due to this - I think Amazon should refund our charges for the day.........
That's a little extreme in my opinion. It's the internet, anything can happen, there are no guarantees, I am quite happy knowing that all my images are right where I left them, I just can't get to them, and if that is to make sure the rest of the images are safe, then so be it.
People really are more understanding that you think about things like this, afterall, do you know of anyone that tries to do business on or with computers and never has any thing go wrong EVER. Doubt it.
Andy, I'm not complaining about the graphic, I'm just adding my 2 cents, If I had a choice I do love the suggestion that kriskros came up with, but like you guys ALWAYS say, add it to the list of requests, it can't hurt to ask, it's not a make it or break it deal!!!:D
Call me dumb and non technical - but why if this is all to do with amazon has the amazon shopping site continued to function normally - are their phots somehow better protected???
i have a high value auction supposed to be ending soon and this outage has potentially cost me a couple of thousand if the last bidders cannot see the photos on ebay that were all hosted here at smugmug.
I would suggest getting new photos up with another server ASAP if it is going to cost you that much. Very simple and quick to do. Or even pay the 25 cents to eBay for extra photos.
ebay auction et al
I don't know why people who have very important auctions be stopped because their pictures are not available on smugmug.
There are other free photo sites like flickr where you can upload pictures for free.
If your images are very important to your business, you must have alternative plan and get on with it. Don't complain while smugmug is having extreme outage issue.
Upload your pictures somewhere else where it is free and then update your ebay images.
Just a thought so you will not blame smugmug forever.
Is everyone blaming everyone except themselves?
Now, back to smugmug. This is definitely on a panic mode now. Really.
* Read-only mode for little things, so that images are still served up
* Great communications even on the homepage:
"The site you are trying to access is hosted by SmugMug.
We're having some temporary technical difficulties. We're working on them at the moment, and expect service to return shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Amazon, our storage provider, is having a service interruption that's causing problems serving some of your photos. More info on their problem | SmugMug's updates
We're not happy about it, of course, but we are prepared for it and expect there to be no data loss or any long-term reduction in service. You can learn more and follow our progess on our Support Forum and our Service Updates Blog.
Thanks for your patience and understanding! "
With links to the source of the prob (AWS and their updates) as well as our own status blog.
The graphic? We're SmugMug. The people that say, "The Deliveryman Cometh" and "Who Loves Ya Baby!"
CDNs might have helped?
I saw Akamai menitioned in another thread. Maybe it would have helped if a Content Delivery Service like Akamai or Panther Express were in use, or was a Pro option.
I know it's not realistic to expect that the gazillion photos on SmugMug all be cached on CDN servers, but at least most recently viewed/uploaded photos would be available even if S3 is down.
I would suggest getting new photos up with another server ASAP if it is going to cost you that much. Very simple and quick to do. Or even pay the 25 cents to eBay for extra photos.
I have uploaded some photos to ebay, but it is an HTML listing which has to link back to a photo hosting site - and you cannot rewrite the whole HTML script right at the end of an auction - that is why I pay and use supposedly the most reliable service here at smugmug! Ebay hosted pictures might be fine for low value auctions, but you cannot use their photo hosting for HTML listings.
This is currently the second most watched item on ebay.co.uk and now there are no photos!!!!!
Whilst I appreciate many who use this site are photographers - photo hosting is used by many other people and we choose smugmug because it is meant to be so reliable.
In the year+ that I have been a SmugMug customer, I've never seen an outage like this. As always, you guys are upfront and honest about what's going on and what we can expect. Love the service, love SM. I don't think the people complaining have ever used other types of hosting services, SmugMug definitely goes above and beyond.
Oh, and I like the graphic (I'd like my homepage better, but the graphic is cool).
To help guard against such an outage, many sites outsource to a major service like Amazon S3. SmugMug does, and so does my favorite blog host, Wordpress. Amazon is down, so both SmugMug and Wordpress are having image hosting problems right now.
So if both the best of the independents and the best of the Amazon-backed services have had recent outages, good luck finding one where it won't happen.
Let me add my two cents worth of praise for the SM team. A few weeks ago I was on something of a bad roll, with problems at Blurb, Lulu and SmugMug all ganging up on me in the same weekend. SmugMug was by far the fastest to respond. In the internet age, customer service seems to be impersonal, if it happens at all. The SmugMug team has been a shining exception to my usual experiences with on-line customer service -- they're quick to respond and honest with their answers.
Stuff happens. And when this is all cleared up, I will still be a satisfied customer because I know from experience that the SM team won't let problems drag on one minute longer than necessary. If you are a newbie, believe me, this is unusual. I have nothing but praise for the SM team.
To help guard against such an outage, many sites outsource to a major service like Amazon S3. SmugMug does, and so does my favorite blog host, Wordpress. Amazon is down, so both SmugMug and Wordpress are having image hosting problems right now.
So if both the best of the independents and the best of the Amazon-backed services have had recent outages, good luck finding one where it won't happen.
Remember a couple of years ago when Myspace went down for about a day - what a flap that caused among the young people. Yeah, we are now dependent on the internet, like it or not. And yet, we are still able to carry on for 15+ pages of praising and complaining, ruminating and communicating. Strange world we live in. All I had planned was a low-key upload of a family shoot for friends. If I were working on something more pressing, I'd be really upset. As it is, just checking the progress and "staying tuned" has taken up way more time than it should have.
This will be but a distant memory soon, I'm sure.
4:03 PM PDT We are in the process of restoring Amazon S3 US, and will shortly be bringing the web servers back online. We expect the service will be restored within 1 hour.
Don't put all your eggs in one basket
I've been in the IT business for sometime now.
Disaster Recovery is on top of the list of priorities. Recovery from an outage, if not caused by nature or unforeseen damage to facilities, should be in minutes and not in hours.
I've been in lead role handling disaster recovery plan.
First in my agenda is: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
If something fails, not the whole organization will be affected.
And as I've said in my earlier comment about mirroring, it is damned too important in any business dealing with networks to adopt mirroring. If SmugMug has this and I believe they do, it is not working.
Real time replication matters in some businesses like banks. Maybe not as serious with photo hosting. But still, this is very critical not only to the business of Smugmug but their customers' business.
This is reality check and changes in operations, backups, recovery must be instituted because this is totally not acceptable.
While I am composing this, I checked first my site if it is already up and running. Unfortunately, it is still down.
Comments
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
www.lumens.smugmug.com
Well. maybe I don't know the technology as well as you guys but considering the current circumstance
http://ergphoto.smugmug.com
kriskrosphotography.com
Kris Kros on flickr
I dont ask this of SmugMug, but do expect them to pass along updates from Amazon as to what the heck is happening. It looks like about 9 hours down - a bit more significant than a minor interruption.
We all have lost a day's business or enjoyment due to this - I think Amazon should refund our charges for the day.........
Z
You could complain about the outage notification graphic...
www.sunglophoto.com
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
i have a high value auction supposed to be ending soon and this outage has potentially cost me a couple of thousand if the last bidders cannot see the photos on ebay that were all hosted here at smugmug.
That's a little extreme in my opinion. It's the internet, anything can happen, there are no guarantees, I am quite happy knowing that all my images are right where I left them, I just can't get to them, and if that is to make sure the rest of the images are safe, then so be it.
People really are more understanding that you think about things like this, afterall, do you know of anyone that tries to do business on or with computers and never has any thing go wrong EVER. Doubt it.
Andy, I'm not complaining about the graphic, I'm just adding my 2 cents, If I had a choice I do love the suggestion that kriskros came up with, but like you guys ALWAYS say, add it to the list of requests, it can't hurt to ask, it's not a make it or break it deal!!!:D
I would suggest getting new photos up with another server ASAP if it is going to cost you that much. Very simple and quick to do. Or even pay the 25 cents to eBay for extra photos.
Monte
I'll ask about this, maybe it's something we could have as part of a super-pro offering one day.
For now....
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I don't know why people who have very important auctions be stopped because their pictures are not available on smugmug.
There are other free photo sites like flickr where you can upload pictures for free.
If your images are very important to your business, you must have alternative plan and get on with it. Don't complain while smugmug is having extreme outage issue.
Upload your pictures somewhere else where it is free and then update your ebay images.
Just a thought so you will not blame smugmug forever.
Is everyone blaming everyone except themselves?
Now, back to smugmug. This is definitely on a panic mode now. Really.
kriskrosphotography.com
Kris Kros on flickr
Surely an alternative to Amazon should be on the agenda after this?
I've stayed way past my bedtime in the hope it would all have been restored - all to no avail.
The weekend has now gone ............
Very disappointed to say the least :hurt
Dougie
Canon 5D Mark III
http://www.dougie-coull-photography.com/
Andy, thanks for considering it.
kriskrosphotography.com
Kris Kros on flickr
Any idea when our galleries will be returning?
Just curious.
Getting there...
* new off-site status blog: http://smugmug.wordpress.com/ which we update all the time now
* Read-only mode for little things, so that images are still served up
* Great communications even on the homepage: With links to the source of the prob (AWS and their updates) as well as our own status blog.
The graphic? We're SmugMug. The people that say, "The Deliveryman Cometh" and "Who Loves Ya Baby!"
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I saw Akamai menitioned in another thread. Maybe it would have helped if a Content Delivery Service like Akamai or Panther Express were in use, or was a Pro option.
I know it's not realistic to expect that the gazillion photos on SmugMug all be cached on CDN servers, but at least most recently viewed/uploaded photos would be available even if S3 is down.
I have uploaded some photos to ebay, but it is an HTML listing which has to link back to a photo hosting site - and you cannot rewrite the whole HTML script right at the end of an auction - that is why I pay and use supposedly the most reliable service here at smugmug! Ebay hosted pictures might be fine for low value auctions, but you cannot use their photo hosting for HTML listings.
This is currently the second most watched item on ebay.co.uk and now there are no photos!!!!!
Whilst I appreciate many who use this site are photographers - photo hosting is used by many other people and we choose smugmug because it is meant to be so reliable.
Oh, and I like the graphic (I'd like my homepage better, but the graphic is cool).
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
http://smugmug.wordpress.com/
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Cincinnati Smug Leader
That's going to be hard to do. If a service depends on an independent data center, that center can go down, like The Planet did a few weeks ago which affected and angered many, including my favorite stats site StatCounter used by many here.
To help guard against such an outage, many sites outsource to a major service like Amazon S3. SmugMug does, and so does my favorite blog host, Wordpress. Amazon is down, so both SmugMug and Wordpress are having image hosting problems right now.
So if both the best of the independents and the best of the Amazon-backed services have had recent outages, good luck finding one where it won't happen.
Stuff happens. And when this is all cleared up, I will still be a satisfied customer because I know from experience that the SM team won't let problems drag on one minute longer than necessary. If you are a newbie, believe me, this is unusual. I have nothing but praise for the SM team.
Steve Barry
www.ShopDaylightImages.com
Railroad Photography by Steve Barry
The Railroad Photographer
www.railroadphotographer.com
Remember a couple of years ago when Myspace went down for about a day - what a flap that caused among the young people. Yeah, we are now dependent on the internet, like it or not. And yet, we are still able to carry on for 15+ pages of praising and complaining, ruminating and communicating. Strange world we live in. All I had planned was a low-key upload of a family shoot for friends. If I were working on something more pressing, I'd be really upset. As it is, just checking the progress and "staying tuned" has taken up way more time than it should have.
This will be but a distant memory soon, I'm sure.
www.SaraPiazza.com - Edgartown News - Trad Diary - Facebook
4:03 PM PDT We are in the process of restoring Amazon S3 US, and will shortly be bringing the web servers back online. We expect the service will be restored within 1 hour.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I've been in the IT business for sometime now.
Disaster Recovery is on top of the list of priorities. Recovery from an outage, if not caused by nature or unforeseen damage to facilities, should be in minutes and not in hours.
I've been in lead role handling disaster recovery plan.
First in my agenda is: "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
If something fails, not the whole organization will be affected.
And as I've said in my earlier comment about mirroring, it is damned too important in any business dealing with networks to adopt mirroring. If SmugMug has this and I believe they do, it is not working.
Real time replication matters in some businesses like banks. Maybe not as serious with photo hosting. But still, this is very critical not only to the business of Smugmug but their customers' business.
This is reality check and changes in operations, backups, recovery must be instituted because this is totally not acceptable.
While I am composing this, I checked first my site if it is already up and running. Unfortunately, it is still down.
kriskrosphotography.com
Kris Kros on flickr