MySpace Down Due To Power Surge 448
BenelliShooter writes "MySpace.Com - Undergoing Maintenance
"hey everyone! there's been a power outage in our data center. we're in the process of fixing it right now, so sit tight. -Tom"
That about says it... I suppose we'll see if they had proper back-ups. " Hah. The site says it was supposed to be back up as of ... 7:40 PST PM. Which was something like close to nine hours ago.
Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Subscribers? You mean the people who aren't paying anything to meet teeny-boppers, shut ins, and FBI agents online?
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
Christ, you're stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have to answer to the advertisers. The advertisers are their customers. The teenie-boppers are the product that they sell to the advertisers.
get a UPS .. Re:Wow ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:get a UPS .. Re:Wow ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty obvious that the idea behind MySpace was more to generate buzz than to actually run an efficient IT organization and world-class site. It grew from a little thing into a gigantic thing too fast for the developers and infrastructure people to adjust their mentality to the large scale. If the whole site is down, that means no rendundant data centers or colocations, or even worldwide coverage. A site can't grow as large as they have while neglecting the fundamentals.
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
That would explain this [slashdot.org]!
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Even if there's no implication A => B, both A and B can be true.
Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Funny)
But... but.. but.. we all hate MySpace and want to read about every misstep it takes!
Sometimes I think of Slashdot as Jerry Springer for nerds.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Go back 10 years, when everyone was talking about the Internet revolution. Remember that? It was going to be great! Everyone can publish their thoughts, make their own site, share photos with their friends, instantly contact anybody!
And now that it's happened thanks to sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, blogs, etc... suddenly everyone's saying, "oh those people are all idiots, they shouldn't be allowed to make websites!"
In short; STFU, you elitist assholes. Sites like MySpace
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the reason for all this elitism towards places like myspace, livejournal, etc from
Not everyone has some brilliant insight to share with others - I know I sure don't, which is why I don't run a blog. I think myspace is great if you're a kid, and people should respect this, but I'd love to be able to tell google to ignore things like myspace/livejournal etc when conducting searches (by default rather than something I must do manually).
So perhaps the "elitist"
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a side note, now that Myspace has become a huge force in the music scene, and many people are relying upon it to help them meet ends, there needs to be greater r
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Father: My daughter can't get on MySpace and she won't shut up about it.
ISP Help Desk: I think I can help you with that. Are you at her computer?
Father: Yes.
ISP Help Desk: Okay, stand up.
Father: Okay, I'm standing
ISP Help Desk: Now slap your daughter in the face. This may require some force.
Father: Okay, did it.
ISP Help Desk: Now say "Shut up, you spoiled brat"
Father: Okay, hang on a second....okay, did it.
ISP Help Desk: Okay, did that fix the problem?
Father: Yeah, that cleared it right up!
ISP Help Desk: Glad we could help you, sir.
-Eric
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Calls like that happen. I used to do ISP tech support. The site could be down and its always the ISPs fault.
Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Informative)
Hell, with a fairly limited budget, I set up two datacentres in an active/active configuration for the last bank I worked at, and that was only handling a 10 million hits a day. It took a while to get the database replication working right, but once we'd done that, it was all fine, and gave protection against total datacentre failure[1]. MySpace is way larger that we were, and they can certainly afford multiple datacentres to prevent an outage such as this. So why didn't they? As I said, the only explanations I can see are ineptitude, or that they're using this as an excuse to mask some other reason for the outage...
[1] Not that a power failure should ever happen in a datacentre anyway. All of the ones I've used have had multiple power feeds from different suppliers, entering on opposite sides of the building, plus redundant UPSes with diesel generators for when the UPS runs out. If you're still having power outages with that sort of infrastructure in place, then something's seriously wrong. And if you don't have that sort of infrastructure in place, then you've chosen the wrong datacentre.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when Livejournal went down? It didn't make a jot of difference now several months later.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
If a bank goes down you have major problems, if a social networking site goes down someone might not be able to reply to a message and misses a night getting drunk
It's not about end users missing a silly message. It's about loosing millions of dollars in revenue when people aren't visiting your site.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:2)
a) on the same grid
b) vunerable to the same SPFs
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Funny)
You live in a city with redundant power grids? There are actually competing power distribution networks, with diversely routed feeders?
Apparently, Enron was useful for something after all.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem that I could see would be the overzealous backhoe operator down the street where all your power/network stuff ends up going allong the same roadside. Worked somwhere with the dual demark think setup.
I worked in a place that had two buldings connected with a walkway so we ran two of our four T1 lines from one ISP and two from another ISP through the other building but all the lines were in the same ditch half a mile down the road.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Informative)
As a professional in this industry, I can tell you from experience that redundancy at this scale is NOT easy, nor is it inexpensive even for someone as big as MySpace or Fox. Add to that the explosive growth that MySpace is constantly experiencing, and this is much harder than it sounds when you're also trying to keep up with existing growth.
I can additionally tell you that I happen to know what data center they're in. The problem was not a simple power failure. The data center's UPS also failed, which took out the HVAC units. 120 degrees in a data center is not good for hardware.
No, it's not a happy situation, but things like this do happen from time to time.
-AC (ironically, the captcha for this post was 'coo1ing'.)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:2)
Presumably if your power feed wasn't originally set up for easy switching between mains and generator it is now...
When your business depends on power, you know how to make calls and get it QUICKLY. It cost us 120 gallons of diesel per hour, but we would have had a catastrophic loss without it.
Depends where you get your fuel from. Diesel for construction/a
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:2)
The only way this wouldn't be that person's fault is if this was force majeure.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:5, Informative)
I can confirm that they/we had a power outage @ saturday after 6pm , and another one sunday. Needless to say there were a shit-ton of engineers here, some of them bringing in their children, wives, pets(redundant?), etc. I was here for nearly 13 hours after the power outage.
The building provides 'UPS' to all of the tenants, and has *massive* diesel generators as well. Only problem - the failover system failed. This is the second time that this building's "UPS/Generator" system failed at a critical time - the last time was Sept 12th last year during the big ol' blackout ( http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/12/la.power.outage/ [cnn.com] ).
Nonworking generators *suck*.
I suppose establishing a properly redundant infrastructure is made more difficult with such an exponential rise in popularity. But then again, excuses *suck*.
Time to fire people. (Score:3)
Boy that is just wrong.
I used to work for a hospital back when I was in college. Once a month we tested the backup power systems for the IT department. Life critical systems where on a differn't system. Those g
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Interesting)
Many generators, in fact, have an automatic "exercise" function that will kick them on at least once a month, run for about 15-30 minutes, and shut off. Any failure to sta
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:2, Informative)
More likely, the UPS is the bridge that runs the place between when utility power drops and until the generators can take the load.
The ginormous UPS at my datacenter can run the whole 23,000 sq feet for about 15 minutes. It takes about 2.5 minutes for the gens to get going.
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Strange happenings at MySpace (Score:3, Informative)
Crackspace (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, you know how addictive this site is if someone posts a story about it going offline to Slashdot and it's accepted!
That site was making some crazy loads of cash. The advertising department was saying "we need web traffic!" and the developers were saying "oh, we'll get you web traffic!" and now the hardware department is saying "wtf?"
Perhaps MySpace should be renamed to IcarusSpace?
Re:Crackspace (Score:2)
No, it just means Myspace and Slashdot have similar demographics, which is sad (for Slashdot).
I think I did it (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I think I did it (Score:2)
Re:I think I did it (Score:2, Funny)
All I got (Score:3, Informative)
We are making some minor changes to this section please bear with us until we can get this back online.
Please do NOT email me about this. Just wait it out. 7/24/2006 -Tom
Re:All I got (Score:5, Funny)
12345
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
That's crazy... I have the same combination on my luggage!
Re:All I got (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, that's my slashdot password. Lucky you don't know my username *phew!*
kjorn
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. (Score:3, Funny)
Ironic... When I first clicked the story link here on
Kinda like MySpace itself. Too funny.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Distributed Storage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Distributed Storage (Score:2)
I have.
--ZS
Backups... (Score:5, Funny)
Other sites (Score:5, Informative)
Even though it could just as easily happen to me, it's still satisfying to say "haha, n00bs".
Although I also note that the datacenter holding my server has on-property generators, which I assumed was pretty standard practice.
Re:Other sites (Score:2)
-Eric
Re:Other sites (Score:2)
CrySpace (Score:5, Funny)
Welp, here comes the troll. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just remember, not everyone has the same values as Slashdot. A lot of the people on MySpace don't care if it's ugly or poorly written because they're having fun. Now as much as we geeks like to claim to be superior to everything short of the pope riding a giant panda, we need to learn to accept others values even if we don't take them.
MySpace's subtitle should be "The social person's easy-blog" and maybe geeks here would grasp it's name better, but wouldn't that be dumbing it down so a geek would understand it? Hmmm....
Re:Welp, here comes the troll. (Score:2)
What I mean is if the scale balanced more, I doubt 10% of the people here are women and most of them are beyond your average attenction whore. Where as most girls on MySpace (or at least a large percent) are rather.... looser in their taste in men and putting out.
No offence ment to the slashdot ladies, but it's not exactly like you flaunt yourselvs around with semi naked pictures and intrests involving "Sex, music and movies!!!!!" like they do there is it?
Re:Welp, here comes the troll. (Score:2)
You're not exactly doing yourself or your arguments any favours, now, are you?!
Hear that? (Score:2, Funny)
Not Uncommon (Score:2)
previous comments; One of the most visited websites in the world should
know something about redundancy, no? Well, they should also be able to
make 'updates' without taking services offline, which they seem to do
every other day. MySpace isn't exactly known for its speed either. It is
running ASP code on IIS servers. That probably has a more than a little
to do with it. One thing is for sure: Tom is NOT my friend.
Re:Not Uncommon (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not Uncommon (Score:2)
Slashdotted! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdotted! (Score:2, Funny)
GASP! (Score:2)
OH, and first post.
Seems to be up (Score:2)
Re:Seems to be up (Score:2)
Not back up yet (Score:2)
I felt... (Score:2, Funny)
Public Service Announcement (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Public Service Announcement (Score:3, Funny)
Guards! Seize the blasphemer!!
Re:Public Service Announcement (Score:2)
My parents won't let me open the door to that room. They said there are nasty monsters in there.
Time I said this (Score:2)
When I see any mention of myspace, do you know what comes to my mind? Metal music bands. Music is huge in myspace! It's about the only thing I've ever seen there, band profiles including songs available for streaming (and sometimes downloading) and other stuff. So until recently I thought it was a website for bands. Seems I was terribly mistaken and it's more like to USA what hi5 is to Europe? Or worse, seeing how badly people speak about it here at
Re:Time I said this (Score:2)
Re:Time I said this (Score:5, Informative)
The irony of it is that MySpace is a great way for non-RIAA bands to promote themselves and network with other bands, finding new places to play, organizing shows, etc. Slashbots continually harp about how bands should be doing that kind of thing, bypassing the RIAA in favor of self-promotion - but when the bands actually start having a little success in doing so, the slashbots all line up to rag on them for it.
up, down, up, down (Score:2)
OMG (Score:2, Funny)
I"m fReaAKing OUT!!!! This cant be happening.
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG
It wasn't over use by data mining? (Score:3, Informative)
maybe they're hosting on ipowerweb... (Score:2)
And in other News... (Score:2, Funny)
It's so obvious... (Score:3, Funny)
Yay! (Score:2)
I noticed it at midnight last night, when I tried to load Cobra Starship [cobrastarship.com]'s myspace page. It provided a nice impetus to get off my butt and go to bed.
adware (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this the *real* reason? (Score:5, Interesting)
Quick (Score:2)
6:40pm PST (Score:3, Interesting)
When I reloaded half an hour later, "Tom" had removed the "its 6:40pm PST now. wanna place a bet?" part. I guess they knew they were having problems that'd take a while.
It is as though a million pubescent girls... (Score:3, Funny)
Um....so?? (Score:2)
To be fair, at least they have a page up about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And we laugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like somebody who's never been there :-)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)