The IT Skeptic - Comments for "An outage on the IT Skeptic website and why technology hates me"

self-flagellation

skeptic — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:50:33 +0000

hey Rik, long time no hear. Yes there is some kind of self-flagellation involved in working in IT isn't there?

The google cloud

mbuzina — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:24:01 +0000

Hi Ivan,

One of the issues was a communication failure between the hosting company and Rob. I guess that would not have been better with google....

You should think about the mantra as well, you propose a technology solution to something you yourself called a people issue. But yes, maybe googles people are better than Westhosts and their processes are better, but who knows what they are better for (google? you? the itskeptic?).

Even in such a case you will need a local "last-line-support".

Regards,
Marc
http://buzina.wordpress.com

Suggestions

mbuzina — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:19:56 +0000

Hi Rob,

Well, alternative support could be from similar low-revenue on-man shows, by ways of a gentlemans agreement. Combining strengths can help. As to a better communication method, yep sending the information about a server down to mail adresses located on the very servers can be avoided (I once received my mail password in that exact way, per mail to the address I was going to get!).

This is not to bicker about your quality of service (hey, your site has always been up when I tried!), but to talk about improving in difficult situations. So grab an alternate mail address & server from the large supply of free hosters, maybe use a service which sends a text message to your cellphone (roaming texting, is still rediculously expensive per byte but due to its size limit probably within the budget if used exclusively for this purpose) when it receives an email and request your hosting service to send this kind of info to both your mail adresses. Should work, especially after such a down.

So you had a major incident, now do a review, record a problem and try to reduce the impact, risk off re-occurance and find means to mitigate the risk.

You posted here, which is your medium for exchanging info and tapping into a large pool of knowlege, so you probably did...

Btw. Technology is the means, not the end to IT. But if it becomes, it is usually the end of IT ;-)

Regards,
Marc Buzina
http://buzina.wordpress.com

P.S.: If technology is inherently broken, why does it allways frustrate us when it breaks down? Maybe we should do something to reduce the impact upon our feelings....

Embrace technology but hate stupid people without processes

Ivan Erdos — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:03:45 +0000

“On the other hand I'm not sure what provision a low-revenue-earning one-man organisation would make for alternate support. or DR.”
I almost wrote: go to the cloud, of course.
B,ut, somebody wrote an interesting post recently about the threats related to cloud computing:
“The top seven issues with Cloud Computing”
So, it is dangerous, too.
However, I still vote to Google an not to Westhost (or whatever) if I have to trust in their operations practices, technology and preparedness for an outage.

Secondary comment: you wrote you hated technology. Don’t do that. In this case (too, as usually) not the technology caused the issue but stupid people. Our job is to make people smarter than this. Technology has no brain, no feelings, doesn’t follow processes and doesn’t need endorsement or punishment. People do.
Don’t forget your mantra even in desperate situations: people first , than processes and only in the end of the line, technology.

I soooo get this post

Rik — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:55:26 +0000

Not only is this my job as an Incident/Problem/Crisis Manager to deal with this type of stuff, I am also a victim of it on more occasions than I choose to imagine. Its fine and dandy when I break something at home and get yelled at by my users there, but to have to manage our enterprise environment when something breaks and try to wrap some sense around it all is just maddening. But hey, I love technology in a sadist type of way.

Wish I went off to the Pink Elephant, but no funding from the Company for that this year, maybe next.

Good stuff as usual sir,

Rik

what provision

skeptic — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Perhaps the cobbler's children have no shoes. On the other hand I'm not sure what provision a low-revenue-earning one-man organisation would make for alternate support. or DR. Nor what communication mechanism a budget hosting service would use to their many thousand customers, other than email and web notices. Open to suggestions...?

Murphy

mbuzina — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:02:35 +0000

Hi Skep,

So you made the mistake of believing in technology? If you are the "final and last level of support" for the itskeptic.org service, you should have either a replacement available (and a proper means of communicating with your provider, them sending an email is not a proper communication service, they will not know if it reaches you) or you should have had your equipement ready. Or you just took a entrepreneurial risk which tends to drop you into the cacky sometimes.

And yes, technology has the intersting capability of sensing when a service is most vulnarable to failures and it will undoubtedly fail at that exact moment. That is a special case of the law that was discovered in 1949 by Edward A. Murphy jr.

http://buzina.wordpress.com

Wooo spooky

skeptic — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 01:40:23 +0000

OK now I'm getting paranoid about technology. I write a diatribe about how i hate technology and what happens? That post and only that post has a technical problem and is inaccessible to unregistered users. Et tu Drupal?