Google outage outrage over #GoogleFAIL
- TAGS:AS, GOOG, Google, Googlefail, outage, routing, TCP/IP
- IT TOPICS:Cloud Computing, Data Center, Internet, Networking, Security
It's IT Blogwatch, and Google disappeared for some users for a while yesterday. Cue widespread wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Yesterday, la GOOG messed up its network routing, causing a bit of an outage. Richi Jennings watches bloggers blame hackers, AT&T, and even Cthulhu. Not to mention Star Wars meets MacGuyver, Airwolf, Dallas...
Stacey Higginbotham reported yesterday's problems:
Google [appeared] to be having problems across its Gmail, search and even its Blogger platforms.
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Google says the slowdowns and outages today were caused by a mistake that meant some of its traffic was routing through Asia, causing service interruptions and delays ... says about 14 percent of its users were affected ... users around the world seem to be affected. ... The timing is somewhat ironic, as it comes one day after Google signed a large enterprise deal to provide 30,000 seats to Valeo.
Mike Harvey considers his options:
It all seems to have been resolved now. I have to say that here in San Francisco I seem to have escaped any trouble at all - which is weird because lots of others here have been complaining of Google meltdown locally. Like millions of others I have come to depend on Google for lots of things - especially my email. Time to investigate alternatives perhaps, just in case?
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols agrees:
Google managed to knock-out its own network. ... With network engineers like this, who needs crackers?
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Besides search, all, and I mean all, of Google's applications were knocked out. Which leads me to the question, "Do we really want to rely on Google or any of SaaS (Software as a Service) for our programs?" ... I have never, ever liked the idea of depending on networked applications. ... [It's] dangerous it is to trust the Internet with my work.
But Seth "H." Weintraub is all, like, pish-tosh:
A lot of people are going to get huffy about this one and of course they always have that right. But the naysayers have to understand one thing. Outages happen all of the time.
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I remember when I ran my own mail servers. Even when everything was done properly, we had outages. ... If it isn't your email servers, it's the server room power or maybe the air conditioners or a faulty switch or cut ethernet cable. ... A glitch like this shouldn't keep people off of SaaS applications. The reality is that vendors like Google can keep the applications going much better than a small (or even large) IT department.
Edwin Davidson has a tale to tell:
If it's local and I own it, I have to fix it. If it's outsourced and Google owns it, I sit back and let Google fix it. Which is nice.
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If you look at the last year, the cloud solution has had a better uptime than what I was providing computing in planned maintenance, patching, updates and all. It was nice to leave at 5pm, knowing ThePlanet would fix the switch and get us back up. And they did. It's a lot easier to gripe about the cloud being down and sit back, than to manage and fix your own local servers switches and such. When you get to managing hundreds of servers, it becomes time to know what to outsource.
And Aladrin agrees:
Having run my own mail server, and used mail servers run by companies I work for, I'll -gladly- take GMail's track record for reliability. Even with no 'guarantee', it's been a hell of a lot better than anything else I've experienced.And what's really the difference between a server going down locally that affects you and a server going down globally that affects you? Nothing.
So what's your take? Get involved and leave a comment.
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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 24 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter or FriendFeed, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: contact Richi.
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