outage | Zoli's Blog

Costco.com Partially Down

Technology March 9th, 2009

Server Error in ‘/’ Application.

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.
Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".


<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode="Off"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>
Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application’s <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.


<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
    </system.web>
</configuration>

Oops. smile_sad

Tags: costco, error, outage

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Comcast Digital Enhancement Off to an Analogue Start

Technology February 7th, 2009

Comcast is “enhancing” their network, converting all but the Limited Basic channels to digital only. This is NOT the government mandated digital transition, which would require no additional set-top boxes for cable-connected TV’s. This is Comcast’s on upgrade, and one that requires a digital box, if you want to continue to receive channels above 35, including CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ESPN, USA, MTV, USA, LIFE – just to name a few.

They are sending out flyers now (so don’t throw it in junk mail), and you can sign up for two free boxes at www.comcast/digitalnow, or call a customer service number. I have both digital box connected and standalone TV’s in the house, so decided to act now, before I forget. You can guess which option I took: wait on the phone or get done in a few clicks…

Oops! System Unavailable: call a number. In fact call it twice, once to order, then again to activate. A rather analogue way to start the digital transition. Comcast: FAIL. smile_sad

Update (2/8/09): Tweeting it up with @comcastcares. Will see if this helps …

Update (2/9/09): The error message is now changed from “System Unavailable” to “Please Call Us”. This might give the impression there is something with your account, rather than a system error. I guess that’s a way of “fixing” the problem.

Please Call Us
We apologize, but we are unable to process your request online. To order digital devices, please call 1-877-634-4434. To activate digital devices you’ve already received, please call 1-888-634-4434

Update (2/26/09): 3 weeks later the error is still not fixed. The Web site Comcast’s mass mail points to is dead. I guess not even @comcastcares has magic powers…

Tags: comcast, comcast digital, comcast outage, digital cable, digital tv, fail, outage

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Zoho Status Displays Availability for All Services – You Can Use it, Too.

SaaS November 11th, 2008

No service is a 100% available, and of course your SaaS provider’s outage always comes in the ‘worst time’, just when you have a deadline to meet… what really gets painful is when you have no information whatsoever on what just happened and how long the outage may be. Major providers like Salesforce.com and Amazon learned the lesson the hard way, and they both released their status dashboards after extended outages and the customer uproar that followed:

Free services rarely display such level of transparency, but that’s exactly what Zoho is announcing today: they created Zoho Status , a monitoring service which displays the health of all Zoho Applications – currently 24. Here’s a partial screen-print:

If it looks familiar, perhaps you followed my earlier advice on using Zoho’s Site24×7 service on your own site or even blog. I’ve been using it for two years now, and received alerts of outages that neither I nor my service provider were aware of.

Zoho took their own tools and turned it into a public availability display, monitoring their services from six different locations: Seattle, New Jersey, Singapore, London, Germany and Australia. For now the display is rather “boring”, being all green. Obviously we’re all better off if it stays that way and we have no reason to check the status site. fingerscrossed

What makes sense, however, is to use Site24×7 on your own site, or on any service you are dependent on (you don’t have to install anything, it’s all external monitoring). As usual, it starts with a free level, adding extra paid services – the new addition today is the Enterprise version, allowing SLA definition, compliance tracking and reporting.

(This article is cross-posted from for CloudAve, the Zoho-sponsored Cloud-Computing / SaaS / Business Blog I am editing. Subscribe to our feed here.)

Tags: Availability, downtime, monitoring, outage, SaaS, site24x7, sla, status dashboard, transparency, uptime, zoho, zoho status

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LinkednIn Down in Celebration of their Billion-Dollar Club Membership

Software, Startups, Technology June 18th, 2008

<rant>

Quite a celebration: just the day after their $53M investment round, valuing the company at $1B (that’s Billion with a B) was announced, LinkedIn is down: