Forum Hits the Wall

[the_wine_snob]

Well, about 4:15PM AZT (PDT now), the forum has hit the performance wall.

Pages take about 10 mins. to load, and many of the editing features just will not work. Scheduled maintenance?

Glad that I got most of my work done earlier.

Hunt

[Jacob Bugge]

This time I was slowed down, too, as was Kath.

[Claudio_González1]

I still fail to see any comment on the slowdown by any host/moderator/Adobe employee. Is it going to be completely ignored? Almost unbelievable.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

They want to treat us like mushrooms (keep us in the dark).

It show arrogance, they do not wish to admit something went wrong. Could have been a problem with the communication network. equipment failure, cut cables, But they don't wish admit anything.

Should have been printed at the top of page Similar to this :

WE ARE EXPERIENCE NETWORK DIFFICULTIES AND DO NOT KNOW EXACTLY WHEN WILL BE CORRECTED.

WE ARE WORKING WITH DUE DILIGENCE TO CORRECT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!

[Guest]

This happens when you buy Jack Daniels Whiskey instead of paying the server lease bill.

[Claudio_González1]

dec9 wrote:

This happens when you buy Jack Daniels Whiskey instead of paying the server lease bill.

The cause of the failure is immaterial. A simple "We are experiencing slowdowns and trust to correct them soon" would have shown that users are worthy of some consideration. I wonder where all those that are so quick on the trigger when they feel the petal of a rose touching their skins have been all these 19 hours. They should have noticed the slowdown, and should have noticed this thread by now if they were away and weren't affected by the slowdown.

[kanguyen]

As you already know, our site experienced a degradation in service starting late last night and a brief outage in the early hours of this morning (Pacific time). I'm pleased to report that it had nothing to do with us using our budget to buy whiskey.

I don't believe that it's our practice to post notices of unplanned service degradations on the site itself, especially when they occur in the middle of the night. Jive Support monitors the performance 24/7 and were actively working on the issue. The issue was resolved at around 7am this morning Pacific time. We do post notice regarding planned outages or maintenance on systems impacting forums.

[Guest]

kanguyen wrote:

I'm pleased to report that it had nothing to do with us using our budget to buy whiskey.

Good response

To be fair, if the site is slow (or down) it does make it a lot harder to put an announcement up saying everything is hosed, so I'm okay with that.  I am more interested, however, in pointing the finger at Jive and the forum software for yet another technical performance problem.  Whether network, middle-tier, or database server performance caused... this seems to be turning into a repeating pattern.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Slow downs are understandable for slow downs. But we had an outright Outage. I used 6 or 7 Browsers to get in and it was flat dead. and it wasn't just late it started for me about 7PM Eastern Daylight Time which is not late for me I don't go to bed til about 11:30PM.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

Yes, if the local lines are Okay but the long distance or outgoing lines are down. And If I call even if it  late at night they will let me know.

[Kath-H]

Polite and good humoured as ever, Kanguyen Maybe you could give Jochem 'human' lessons

However, 'middle of the night' kind of depends on where you are ....

[Claudio_González1]

This thread was initiated at 7:47 pm yesterday, and the first message reporting improvements was posted at 9:45 am today, all local times (a message at 9:44 still reported excessive slowness). This is 2 minutes short of 14 hours, so the time span of the slowdown couldn't have all been "the middle of the night" anywhere on the Earth, polar regions excluded. And I am in no way criticizing Kanguyen; I have already praised here for her post.

[JhabrixJay]

Kath-H wrote:

Polite and good humoured as ever, Kanguyen Maybe you could give Jochem 'human' lessons

Stretching that last one a bit... aren't we?

[Guest]

PjonesCET wrote:

Slow downs are understandable for slow downs. But we had an outright Outage. I used 6 or 7 Browsers to get in and it was flat dead. and it wasn't just late it started for me about 7PM Eastern Daylight Time which is not late for me I don't go to bed til about 11:30PM.

Yes, I'm just trying to have somewhat realistic expectations here...this is after all just a stupid (getting more stupid every day) Jiveware forum--not exactly a 911 call center.  We are holding them to an awfully high standard by expecting to be immediately informed of all problems, even if they occur during off hours from Adobe's perspective.  So I'm okay with all that and I understand...

What I don't understand is why these problems are happening in the first place.  I recall problems being somewhat rare under WebX IIRC.  Why is Jiveware so unstable?  Does the server software suck?  (yes)  I'd rather point the finger at the correct perpetrators-- JIVE SOFTWARE and their criminal snake oil salespeople.  

Or, at least steer conversation onto the reasons for the outage rather than getting mad at poor support putting out the fire.  Don't blame the firemen, blame the engineers!

[Phillip_M_Jones]

The first indication something was amissi was the last post from adobe came in about 4PM EDT which would have been roughly 1PM California Time and when I tried to get into read them and post at 7 - 8 PM I was only able to get two post in by email I might add from 8PM on as I said earlier I could gett in with a battering RAM. Dead acrording to all the browsers forums.adobe.com did not exist.  You know all the different browsers I tried. all showed te same message after trying for 5 minutes each. (All have set keep Alive so they will try longer before timing out.). The first Time I could post was roughly 9:45 AM. (about 6:45 AM California Time). I wouldn't call from about 5PM one day to 9:45AM a minor outage.  IF its Jive's Fault they need to be made to pay a pentalty fee for every hour they were out. When runing a system as large of this they should have a minimum 4 redundant servers so when a glitch happen they flip a switch and  the outage might last 30 seconds at the most.

[Guest]

You're forgetting a key problem, PJ.

Jive is incompetent.

[Claudio_González1]

I wonder if it's only Jive's incompetence. The site is still using Clearspace 2.5.7.

[Guest]

Claudio González wrote:

I wonder if it's only Jive's incompetence. The site is still using Clearspace 2.5.7.

True but I also wonder if a newer (and possibly more bloated version with more buggy features) is really going to equate to better in this case.

[Claudio_González1]

Well, after reading some old posts such as this one http://forums.adobe.com/message/1942933#1942933 (posted on May 6th!) it would seem that we are in no danger of an upgrade in the near future...

[Guest]

Wow, link that the post you linked to is pretty interesting, and only confirms what I've been saying: Jive Software is a snake oil sales company.  Pretty clearly they just want to keep collecting more money from Adobe for any kind of basic fixes (THIS SHOULD BE COMMON SENSE BASIC FUNCTIONALITY!), whether or not the fixes really even work. 

Jiveware "support":

That would be our recommendation, i.e., defer until 3.0 upgrade (or 3.x depending on timeline).  This of course brings up the broader business question of when and if Adobe chooses to upgrade...and this process will require revisitation of lots of aspects that we customized.

i.e. We recommend you pay us more to get this basic functionality fixed!

In response to Adobe basically asking what they'd be getting in version 3, and saying that even version 3 doesn't seem to do what we need it to... Jiveware support responds with this.

Jiveware "support":

When you type something into the search box, notice that the dropdown

display under the search box now gives you the ability to limit

results inside the container you're currently in.

Which is not what users have been asking for either, people want the search to be local by default, not have to screw with some buggy/slow stupid drop down box every single time.  Obviously Jive support/sales is just doing their usual bull to compensate for piss poor "UI designers" and amateur "developers".  (In quotes because they aren't qualified for the titles.)

[Claudio_González1]

What I found specially interesting is the name of the user who posted the May 6th message with the link.

[Bob_Peters]

kanguyen wrote:

I don't believe that it's our practice to post notices of unplanned service degradations on the site itself, especially when they occur in the middle of the night.

Late evening CDT (near Chicago) is hardly "middle of the night".  A simple post indicating that we are being Jived would have been appropriate, even if not appreciated

[Claudio_González1]

Kanguyen, of lately you seem to be the only one coming to the rescue. Thank you.

You are probably right in all you say, but a formal notice wasn't really necessary. However, this thread was started 17 hours ago (sorry, I previously wrote 19), and different users have been reporting the failure all night, in spite of the enormous difficulties for posting. What I miss is just a single one line message acknowledging the problem. This used to be normal practice in the old (or fair, as Jacob calls them) forums, and I would find it pitiful if it has been abandoned.

[Phillip_M_Jones]

While it may not be Policy it should be. Other major sites if something happens they give notice to there users. Even My ISP If the phone company cuts some phone lines affecting service they post on main page of website.

[Ozzwoman9]

Even My ISP If the phone company cuts some phone lines affecting service they post on main page of website.

Huh? So you have no internet connection, you open your browser, and a message is displayed about a cut phone line?

Are you referring to the generic cannot find a connection, check your browser, or call your service provider message?

[the_wine_snob]

We do post notice regarding planned outages or maintenance on systems impacting forums.

That was the first thing that I checked, prior to the initial post. I'd already checked other sites to make sure it was nothing on my end. They ran fine.

As for the "slowdown," well we seem to be past it now. Heck, "stuff" happens.

All's well that ends well - I guess...

Thanks for reporting. I thought that maybe the "generator gerbils" had gone on strike, wanting more kibbles, or something.

Hunt