A minor network failure?

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

A minor network failure occurred this evening at at 5:30 PM PST which caused the following realms to be taken down for emergency maintenance. Unfortunately, this network failure completely prevented players from communicating with the database server. Our network engineers have been working with our data center specialist to resolve this situation and we plan to provide everyone with an update within the hour. We apologize greatly for any inconvenience that the extended period of downtime has caused for those on the affected realms.

Blackrock
Cenarius
Deathwing
Destromath
Dethecus
Doomhammer
Frostwolf
Gorgonnash
Hyjal
Icecrown
Kel'Thuzad
Kil'Jaeden
Kilrogg
Lightbringer
Ner'zhul
Proudmore

Silver Hand
Spinebreaker
Tichondrius
Uther

These servers were down for approximately 10-14 hours in total starting yesterday at 5:30pm PST.

I wonder what constitatues a "Major" or "Catastophic" network issue to Blizzard?

I sure hope Blizzard gets these US West Coast server issues resolved soon. Its getting old. Its almost always the same 20 servers at least 2 times per week for months now. You would think with our 5 million dollars or so per month of revenue they get from us that they could have the best minds and equipment working on this issue and have it resolved.

If not it would be nice to know what is happening without them blowing smoke up our asses constantly. They ask for patience. Sorry, patience is gone now. They give us vague outage posts or in this case not even hitting the mark. This was not a 'minor' network issue. This was quite obviously catostrospic.

I work as the Lead Technican in a Network and Systems Monitoring Center for the largest privately owned ISP on the west coast. 10-14 hour outages are not minor these are extremely serious and should be treated as such. Also informing your customers with hourly updates with some form of detail is also required. Having no ETA is fine as long as details are coming out hourly.

Yesh they need to pull there heads out of the hole they stuck themselves in.

Anyways my rant is off now. Steam is blown and Ive taken my medication.

Anyways, all done ranting now.

[Kan]

Ner'zhul is always fucking down its quite annoying.

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Im certain Blizzards response to this most recent outage will be compensation by crediting our credit cards.

Know what? I dont want my money back. I just want to play the game in a stable enviroment. Keep my money and use it to stablize things. In the mean time give me 1 bubble of rested XP and maybe like 50s-1g per hour you are down. This would at least make up for my lost XP time somewhat and my lost auction time.

Hell, what do I know. Nothing, I just know I'd like to play when I want to and if I cant because of an issue on Blizzards side then at least pay me back by trying to give me back my time lost.

/shrug

[Jait]

Originally posted by Kashmiir Battlekat
I work as the Lead Technican in a Network and Systems Monitoring Center for the largest privately owned ISP on the west coast. 10-14 hour outages are not minor these are extremely serious and should be treated as such. Also informing your customers with hourly updates with some form of detail is also required. Having no ETA is fine as long as details are coming out hourly.

Besides the fact you can't even spell your own job title. This has to be the funniest thing I've heard today. A Lead Technician telling another company their Lead Technician lies?

Oh the irony.

I would never hire you simply because you wouldn't know how to keep business and the first problem that occurs you're likely to have everyone running around screaming FIRE!

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Im fairly certain I didnt say he 'lied', but they obvisouly understated the issue. 10-14 hours of downtime is not a minor issue in my book nor anyones book who works in the service industry.

Im hoping that they do get these server issues resolved soon. Im not going to quit over it because I know they will fix them its just piss poor management to not keep your customers informed when they obviously have a severe customer affecting issue.

and Jait... fat fingering words is a way of life!

[Daerath]

Minor network failures that cause emergency maintenance on servers? What the fuck is that shit? A minor network failure is like, "one of the routers died, so we replaced it and restarted the WoW services on each box that lost network connectivity. No biggie."

How badly are their systems designed that a network failure breaks multiple servers and requires 10 - 14 hours of maintenance?

[Salizar]

Theres something itching at the back of my head that tells me that Blizzard has several servers clustered in to one database.
I'm really curious is we could have several people form different servers keep track of all the loot lag that everyone experiences.
It seems really odd to me that this type of lag is isolated to looting and merchants. However combat mostly isn't affected nor is chat.

I am also really curious to know if this loot lag is happening at a regular intervall. I'll have to write this inforamtion down.

Possible causes.
1. Its possible that Loot and merchant databases are shared across multiple servers.
2. database backups might factor into the lag that we're experiencing. High Network traffic or simply database unavaliablity issues would attribute to the 'lag'.

[The Bog]

I wonder what constitatues a "Major" or "Catastophic" network issue to Blizzard?

That storm that tore a hole in their office. That's when they start saying things are "bad."

[Tomas]

You pretty much need to have the datacenter destroyed by a hurricane before they admit there is a major network failure.

[Hyarth]

Originally posted by The Bog
That storm that tore a hole in their office. That's when they start saying things are "bad."

Damnit, beat me to it.
Yeah, when a tornado comes through, tears the roof off the data center, and leaves the servers so waterlogged they require 2 days to air-dry.

[Dynalisia]

And on to Blizzard's next oafish post about a serious problem and some overfrustrated forum local's snide post on it we go!

[nadime]

Originally posted by Salizar
Theres something itching at the back of my head that tells me that Blizzard has several servers clustered in to one database.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING

Did you also see their urgent recruiting ad for an Oracle guru? Guess where their problems lie...

[Kashmiir Battlekat]

Originally posted by nadime
DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING

Did you also see their urgent recruiting ad for an Oracle guru? Guess where their problems lie...

Im not sure its urgent, but they are in fact looking for someone as you stated:

http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/oracl...istrator.shtml

[James]

Little gem from the WoW boards:

Forum Whiner: Blizzard, I have just one more question: If you can give us a list of what will be included in the patch and also have the time to code such nonsense as chat bubbles, why can’t you give us an ETA for the patch?

Blizzard: You want answers?

Forum Whiner: I think I'm entitled to them.

Blizzard: You want answers?!

Forum Whiner: I want the truth!

Blizzard: You can't handle the truth!

Blizzard: Son, we play in a world that is generated by code. And that code has to be created by developers with more sense than you. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Mr. I-Work-in-IT Know-it-all? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the delayed patch and you curse the Developers. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That the patch delay, while unintended and tragic, probably saved subscriptions. And my nerfs, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves subscriptions. You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at LAN parties, you want me coding at that computer. You need me there. We use words like balance, code, stability...we use these words as the backbone to years of work spent developing a game. You use 'em as a punchline in your flame posts. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who games and sleeps at his keyboard under the blanket of the very entertainment I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it. I'd prefer you just said thank you and went back to gaming. Otherwise, I suggest you click cancel on your account screen and stand opposed. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to.

[findar]

everyone knows most of these servers are clustered.

hence why origionally guild names couldnt be on dif servers in the same time zone.