Data Center Move Goes Awry for TypePad

miller60 writes "Problems during a switchover between data centers have slowed TypePad, the popular blog hosting service. Typepad maxed out its data center space and all available power at Internap, and is in the process of moving to a new data center. The transition has not gone smoothly, causing the Typepad service to slow to a crawl amid very public complaints by its blogger customers. TypePad operator Six Apart promises things will improve soon."

typepad gone bad

[ak_hepcat]

I wondered why I wasn't able to read WWdN:iX today...

And here Wil had been considering moving to TypePad for his next site upgrade....

The TypePad home page is on Akamai ...

[miller60]

... hence the link to that URL rather than direct link to individual blogs. If a midnight Slashdotting brings Akamai and its 15,000 servers to its news, I guess THAT would be news.

Hey, if it happens, we'll have to post a link about the Akamai outage and see if it happens again.

Re:Living up to their name

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Internap's facilities are pretty big. When we moved our stuff into their Seattle facility about three years ago, they were at 60% capacity. Now they are at 97% capacity. This facility has hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of racks each of which is capable of holding 48 1U servers. They recently gutted a conference room and a large staging area space so they could add more. I believe Internap has 25 similar facilities worldwide. They are doing brisk businesss.

You get what you pay for

[davidwr]

The least intrusive way to move data centers is by using remote hot backups. That costs. A lot.

The second best option is to estimate your downtime, double it, and raise it to the next unit of measurement. If you think it will take 2 days to move if everything goes according to plan, tell your customers it will take up to 4 weeks to iron out all the kinks.

Re:Well..

[TubeSteak]

I wasn't going to click their link.... until you said that

Then i read the farking article and realized it didn't matter

Typepad's home page is hosted at Akamai, a major content distribution network, and has been spared the level of performance problems seen by many TypePad bloggers. Mena Trott promised things will be better soon. /blockquote

Re:Phew.

[somethinghollow]

What the hell are you talking about? 10% of myspace's functionality is down at all times due to Tom's apparent love of testing his (or whoever the developers are now) newest script on the live server instead of a development server.

I'm not emo or anything (all my friend's use myspace, I swear that's why I joined). But I did send 4 messages to the same person today (at least 1 minute apart) and ended up at a page that said "test"... just the word "test"... no back ground or navigation... just the word "text." None of the messages ever made it to the person. That's worse than Microsoft.

Myspace is a farce. I wish I had the time to write my own social networking website that is better than myspace and squash it! (Orkut sucks, too. I'm already a member.)

Re:Living up to their name

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Am I the only one that finds the name Internap a little ironic here?

NAP == Network Access Point

If you understand that InterNAP's business model is to provide premium connectivity services (they buy bandwidth on all the big backbones and use that paid-for-bandwidth to provide guaranteed connectivity and all kinds of fancy routing-tricks to their customers) it actually makes sense that leaving InterNAP's service would result in crappy network performance.

Disclaimer: I am a shareholder of INAP, I bought shedloads of shares when they hit rock-bottom after the dot-bomb, although not enough to qualify for the 5% rule.

Re:Heh, I did that. Twice

[ScentCone]

And how is he supposed to stop you? Gun force? This is a free world and you are free to buy your services where you want. There is really nothing, the old operator can do against this. So stop talking bullshit.

Actually, "force" is exactly how. If you're delinquent on your bills a colo facility, the fine print in your contract generally states that the operator can prevent you from entering their private property and accessing your gear. If you can still walk into the building, they usually can change combinations/locks on your cage or cabinet. At that point, the only way you're physically going to get your equipment is to destroy parts of their facility. Enter the police (with guns, if that what it takes).

When you colo, you're on private property, with very limited rights. You start screwing around with the invoice payments, and your rights to access that property diminish very quickly. This is just as it should be, since the colo operation is providing services like power and bandwidth (and physical security, and generators, and climate control), and they risk a lot when you're a heavy user. Of course, they could ask for a substantial deposit up front just in case, and many do with start-up customers.

But mostly they (the colo operators) assume that holding your gear hostage is an OK way to deal with people trying to stiff them on the bills. Just like a mechanic who is allowed to hold onto your car if you don't want to pay them for work they just did... and just like they can use force, if they have to, to prevent you from taking that car off of their lot before you pay.

Hosting companies don't like porn

[advid]

Most porn sites are hosted by big porn-friendly (and porn-specific) hosting companies. They tend to offer package deals -- server space, all the scripts required to accept payment and handle accounts, and sometimes even porn to sell. (Ever wonder why a lot of sites have the same pictures? That's why.)

It's because most hosting companies have some restrictions on "naughty" content in their TOS; or they did, last time I was in the market. So if your business depends on hosting porn, you really want a host who is totally ok with it. (I went with Dreamhost [dreamhost.com] for my vaguely naughty site. It seems to be a good choice.)

So it's possible that the GP was talking about a master porn site, with a whole lot of other sites hosted. It's also possible that it was just a decent sized independent site. I'd imagine that serving large hi-rez pictures and movies isn't something you can do with just a handful of servers for any sort of reasonable customer-base.