Next Firmware Update on the ALP will be on 6/5/14

[Holla]

still down for me--looks like it will have to happen tomorrow!

[beingaware]

Why u no cluster server or use backup like rsync to backup server....

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[jdong]

Why u no cluster server or use backup like rsync to backup server....

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I don't think it's as trivial as that to set up additional instances of their web app that generates setup.alp files or produces firmware tailored to your CPU. We have no knowledge about what part of their infrastructure went down. As I said, the static files on alpupdate.com are still up. It's something in the backend that failed. And HA clustering is not trivial to integrate with your apps, and nor is rsync a valid or coherent way to back up a web app atomically to an alternate server, nor is it always a simple job to restore from such an archive of a working website.

Note that I'm not really defending the downtime either. It's horribly disruptive to ALP customers. We now can't change any nontrivial on our ALP setup because they decided the most logical way to generate config files is via a website that's now down. However, it is one of my pet peeves in the tech world that internet commenters tend to overly trivialize running infrastructure and believe they know how to run it better than others.

[beingaware]

I don't think it's as trivial as that to set up additional instances of their web app that generates setup.alp files or produces firmware tailored to your CPU. We have no knowledge about what part of their infrastructure went down. As I said, the static files on alpupdate.com are still up. It's something in the backend that failed. And HA clustering is not trivial to integrate with your apps, and nor is rsync a valid or coherent way to back up a web app atomically to an alternate server, nor is it always a simple job to restore from such an archive of a working website.

Note that I'm not really defending the downtime either. It's horribly disruptive to ALP customers. We now can't change any nontrivial on our ALP setup because they decided the most logical way to generate config files is via a website that's now down. However, it is one of my pet peeves in the tech world that internet commenters tend to overly trivialize running infrastructure and believe they know how to run it better than others.

Not really.

I have Exchange, AD, FS, SQL, TMG all cluster on VMware ESX across two datacentres.
It can even blow out core switches and keep on trucking.
The staff don't even notice as its seemless.

Web is much easier to sync and sql is pretty easy compared to other services .
Using VSS and then pushing those up with something like EMC is very easily doable for having quick turn around on backup of a failed box.
Blow up a new vm, hell have a hot stand by image.
Drop the last snapshot onto it, and bang, you are back online in less then 15 minutes.

my biggest pet peev is companies that fail to invest even a few thousand on HA and then either;
A, whinge they had a failure, then press on the helpdesk guys to hurry us Admins up.
B, take forever to come back online if out sourced
or
C, affecting customer bases. (again out sourced).

Kind regards,
Beingaware,
CCNP R&S, Voice, Datacentre, ASA
VCP5-DCV
RHCSA
MCITP 2008/2012
ITILv3
B.Sc

We done with our pissing match?

[jdong]

Not really.

I have Exchange, AD, FS, SQL, TMG all cluster on VMware ESX across two datacentres.
It can even blow out core switches and keep on trucking.
The staff don't even notice as its seemless.

Web is much easier to sync and sql is pretty easy compared to other services .
Using VSS and then pushing those up with something like EMC is very easily doable for having quick turn around on backup of a failed box.
Blow up a new vm, hell have a hot stand by image.
Drop the last snapshot onto it, and bang, you are back online in less then 15 minutes.


Kind regards,
Beingaware,
CCNP R&S, Voice, Datacentre, ASA
VCP5-DCV
RHCSA
MCITP 2008/2012
ITILv3
B.Sc

We done with our pissing match?

No pissing match going on here. I'm sure this is a very affordable setup for a company that sells a handful of laser jammers to enthusiasts that they work on. This may shock you but not everyone working on LIDAR jamming is a cloud/virtualization/web guru or decides that it's worth their money to hire one.

I do agree with you that they should have done a better job at keeping their site up. But we still have no clue what exactly broke in their setup, so this is all speculation.

jdong,
Software/firmware/kernel engineer who spends all day working with people who are not software inclined but think that they are, whose EE and mathematics intellect fly way over my head so I can't claim I can do their job either....

[beingaware]

No pissing match going on here. I'm sure this is a very affordable setup for a company that sells a handful of laser jammers to enthusiasts that they work on. This may shock you but not everyone working on LIDAR jamming is a cloud/virtualization/web guru or decides that it's worth their money to hire one.

I do agree with you that they should have done a better job at keeping their site up. But we still have no clue what exactly broke in their setup, so this is all speculation.

jdong,
Software/firmware/kernel engineer who spends all day working with people who are not software inclined but think that they are, whose EE and mathematics intellect fly way over my head so I can't claim I can do their job either....

Haha, you must work with engineers .

And AL is pretty large in Europe and over here in Australia, I am sure they could afford the configuration.
If some of my SMB clients can, I am sure AL can.

[jdong]

Haha, you must work with engineers .

And AL is pretty large in Europe and over here in Australia, I am sure they could afford the configuration.
If some of my SMB clients can, I am sure AL can.

I am indeed. And an engineer who does some infrastructure stuff in his spare time, who knows all and well that it's not my strong suit and I'd never trust something I'm put in charge of maintaining. But it seems like more and more businesses "trying out" the whole web infrastructure thing see that their (other types of) engineers are able to seemingly produce a functioning web server. They just declare "mission accomplished" there, and engineers gravitate back to doing their own favorite form of engineering and the infrastructure suffers until something goes horribly wrong.

Oh well, I think I'm preaching to the choir now. People like you let people like me get along with our day to day work

[beingaware]

I am indeed. And an engineer who does some infrastructure stuff in his spare time, who knows all and well that it's not my strong suit and I'd never trust something I'm put in charge of maintaining. But it seems like more and more businesses "trying out" the whole web infrastructure thing see that their (other types of) engineers are able to seemingly produce a functioning web server. They just declare "mission accomplished" there, and engineers gravitate back to doing their own favorite form of engineering and the infrastructure suffers until something goes horribly wrong.

Oh well, I think I'm preaching to the choir now. People like you let people like me get along with our day to day work

Indeed, I have 5 developers in my team who cry anything skips a beat haha.
The company I work for does a mostly HA network deployments along with 2 factor auth/proper security implementations etc for SMB, and gov (mostly airlines, mining, and gov).
I was given my own budget to go nuts with out own Internal network and our own MPLS for our customers, so I did. .

Since the new system went in place, we have had not one outage .
Hardware has failed/servers have had hiccups, but the end users are none the wiser...

[dinkydi]

geeez you guys got me well and truly lost , but good reading while we wait, think it makes it worse lack of info,

[dragons]

Well it's back but doesn't look like the update is available yet.