Geocaching.com website outage - update and current status

[+Graculus]

The website is back up and running but not all services are available. Please see this post from the main forum announcements.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry3985126

 

Chris

Graculus

Volunteer UK Reviewer for geocaching.com

UK Geocaching Information & Resources website www.follow-the-arrow.co.uk/resources

[+Simply Paul]

And welcome back

[+Jonovich]

The website is back up and running but not all services are available.

 

Great to have it back... Many thanks to everyone who has been working behind the scenes on their Independance day Holiday to get everything back. Top work folks. thanks again!

 

Jon.

[+GAZ]

Phew! It's back! thought there was some maintenance going on, I am in Turkey at the moment, and logged a cache.....a flippin DNF mind, a couple of days ago, so I knew it wasn't our end at fault! I know there are a lot of wbsites banned out here.......the GAGB forums is one of them

[+Simply Paul]

It seems to be having problems again- I've been trying to log a cache for 20 minutes, and I've dozens left from my Orkney/Shetland/Scotland/Three Peaks Challenge adventure to get done today

[+MartyBartfast]

It seems to be having problems again- I've been trying to log a cache for 20 minutes, and I've dozens left from my Orkney/Shetland/Scotland/Three Peaks Challenge adventure to get done today

 

I expect that's because it's now Saturday morning US time, and everyone who couldn't do their weekend planning last night is hitting the servers to plan their weekend caching trips.

 

I'm giving it a wide berth until early tomorrow.

[+SidAndBob]

As of 5:40 AM PDT (GMT -7), all Groundspeak services are running normally.

Yes, I can confirm it is as slow as ever for a weekend.

 

It's just as well we didn't listen when GS kept telling us there was no need for an off-line database.

[+hiho9]

i'm geting nothing to load... shall leave the sloooooow site for anyone who needs it

[+drdick&vick]

Back to DNS error - Server cannot be found for me.

pain

[+Jonovich]

Back to DNS error - Server cannot be found for me.

pain

 

Working fine for me...

 

J

[+drdick&vick]

and back again

[+goldpot]

...did I miss something?

[+Guanajuato]

Doesn't that just show how dedicated Jeremy & Elias are - nothing they could really do, but they were on site ASAP. Elias even cutting his holiday short so the servers could be brought back online smoothly.

 

For all the stick they get for some things, I think they deserve a massive

WELL DONE! and THANKYOU!

[Mittellegi]

Jeremy's blog Edited July 4, 2009 by BexyBear

[+Mustards]

That's good news that the servers were not damaged, however I might be wrong but I don't think that the search facility is working as I just inputed +best+maps to use on +oregon and it came up blank, I would have thought it would have produced some sort of answer or am I doing it all wrong?

[+HazelS]

use fewer words!!

 

I'd use Talky Toasters maps... I'm not techy, I don't know what they're called!!!!

[+searchjaunt]

As mentioned in http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/overpowered-or-underpowered/

I hope that this will be a lesson for the future and I hope that Groundspeak comes to repent.

[+SaltercreaseRangers]

As mentioned in http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/overpowered-or-underpowered/

I hope that this will be a lesson for the future and I hope that Groundspeak comes to repent.

 

you forgot the smiley

[+searchjaunt]

As mentioned in http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/overpowered-or-underpowered/

I hope that this will be a lesson for the future and I hope that Groundspeak comes to repent.

 

you forgot the smiley

Unfortunately there is nothing funny about the whole situation, is it?

[+Jonovich]

First of all, what is a sprinkler system doing in electrical rooms? There was 6 inches of water. Unbelievable. One doesn’t need to be a genius that water and electricity don’t go together. So why use it as fire fighting system. Argon and CO2 are used for fire fighting electrical equipment for ages now and there even more modern techniques available.

 

Many companies use sprinklers in machine rooms - I've worked for a large financial institution who do just that. The electricity to the room is cut off as part of the sprinklers activation sequence... As the Meerkat says, "Simples". The added avantage is that any staff caught in the room can generally survive a nice dousing of cool fresh water - wheres a being flooded in Argon or CO2 will suffocate them! The equipment is generally ruined but lives can be saved. What's more important?

 

J

[Timfy]

As mentioned in http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/overpowered-or-underpowered/

I hope that this will be a lesson for the future and I hope that Groundspeak comes to repent.

 

Crickey... this little tirade is so full of inaccuracies on the actual event that I don't know where to start. I suggest that you look into the incident reports. Servers were not flooded, the sprinkler systems were activated in other parts of the building. One backup generator was in the vicinity of the fire, the second was in a basement area which had six inches of water in it (from the sprinklers). No one in their right mind is going to authorise startup until the compromised area had been drained and the systems tested and reset.

 

Datacentres plan for outages, incidents and emergencies. A fire, no matter how quickly controlled, is a major disaster and the planning for this would be for shutdown and protection of data.

 

Life or death systems would have geographically seperate mirror systems. It is not a "quick job" to shunt these into service and the right desicions were taken to reinstate the original servers rather than risk data loss / duplication by switching over.

 

Well done to Jeremy, and thanks for junking your 4th July so as the rest of us could carry on logging tupperware as quickly as possible... take a day off and ignore all the whingers!!!

 

(Tim - Major Incident and Problem analyst for a global telecoms company)

Edited July 5, 2009 by Team TimSibLes

[+searchjaunt]

Crickey... this little tirade is so full of inaccuracies on the actual event that I don't know where to start.

All the info is retrieved from the sources as specified via the URLs in the blog. If that info in there is incorrect - as you mention it - you need to correct them.

As far as safe extinguishing media goes, I spoke also about modern alternatives. There are natural, eco friendly inert gas system like Pro Inert. The oxygen level of it will prevent combustion, but people within the space will still be able to breathe normally. As a Major Incident and Problem analyst, you'd probably had heard of it.

 

But this pettifog lead us away from the real issues. If I'm the only person who's not happy about the situation and/or the only voice (crying) in the wilderness, I take note of it and rest my case.

[+HazelS]

Oh for God's sake... so you weren't able to get an upto date list of caches, and had to have a couple of days off caching...

 

Shouldn't you be happy that nobody was hurt or injured, and that the system is back up and running now???

 

At the end of the day this is not life or death.... deal with it and get a grip!!!

[Wilting]

Hark, hark! Is that an agenda I espy flying past?

 

As Hazel said, it's only a list of hidden boxes for god's sake. So we had no lists for a couple of days, so what?! What a great opportunity for getting a life and doing something important. After all something significant was happening today and although we're not allowed to mention it here I'm sure lots of people were usefully engaged in something which didn't rely on having 365/24/7 access to an up to date list of tupperware hidden in various woodlands.

 

If nothing else, why not just go for a walk?

[+Dorsetgal & GeoDog]

I think it is rather churlish to start crowing about how this that and the other was wrong.

 

I applaud Jeremy, Elias and the team for staying on site and getting things sorted out, on what was after all the eve of the US equivalent of a Bank Holiday weekend. Thank you Elias for cutting short your holiday so we can have fun.

 

Yes, yes, there are always things that can be done with hindsight, but telling them now what one thinks, when the fire was totally out of their hands is a bit like visiting someone in hospital with cancer and telling them they should not have smoked! End of!

[Deceangi]

After incident update by Jeremy

[+MartyBartfast]

@searchjaunt

 

GC.com isn't a mission critical system, it's not life or death, and no-one is losing lots of money by the system outage. The most that will have happened is maybe a couple of hundred people worldwide were a bit inconvenienced by it all.

 

Most of the faults lie at the feet of the service provider, not GC.com, and it seems that Jeremy has a few issues with them too, so he might be taking this up with them. Maybe there are better hosting companies out there, and GC.com might be prompted to look elsewhere after this incident. Oh and it's not uncommon to have water sprinkler systems in datacentres, two of the last three BIG international companies I've worked for had it in their datacentres housing 1000+ servers, the other had CO2.

 

As for GC.com having a hot standby, I can't see that happening due to the cost. If it's such a big deal for you, then you can invest in GSAK and maintain your own offline database (as I and many others in here do), it could be down for a week or more and it wouldn't worry me that much. I for one wouldn't want them to increase the Premium member fees to fund a hot standby system.