Site is crawling along

[#1]

oh no not again

Quote

Connection Problems Sorry, SMF was unable to connect to the database. This may be caused by the server being busy. Please try again later.

[#2]

I got that at about the same time but worked at the second attempt

[#3]

Sorry about that 
We are running on half the platform following some problems with the earlier maintenance and its not doing things as it should be (again). Won't happen again this evening, i'm nearly done.

[#4]

I think Plusnet really ought to have a long hard think about what this sort of problem does for its credibility.  If Plusnet appears error-prone when handling its own systems then customers will be more liable to blame Plusnet for any sort of problem they experience with their internet connection, whether or not the fault actually lies with Plusnet.  So the volume of calls and complaints and customers leaving for another ISP is liable to rise.   

[#5]

To be fair - we're moving Datacentres currently and we're talking about a BIG move.
Whilst I don't agree with what you're saying, you are of course, entitled to an opinion.

[#6]

Be afraid - Be very afraid 

Quote

Planned Community Site Maintenance - Thursday 27th August 10.00am-6.00pm. Portal Posted on: Thursday 27 August 2009, 10:15 When's this work happening? Today. What does it affect? The servers used to host our Community website. How long will it take? Up to eight hours. What does the work involve? We will be moving some of the servers used to host our Community Site to a new data centre in Sheffield. Is it likely to cause problems? No it shouldn't do, the master servers are housed in a different data centre and aren't being moved as part of this work. Is there anything else I need to know? This is a continuation of the work posted on the Community Site yesterday. Kind Regards, Chris Parr Customer Support

[#7]

It should be okay.
We've already removed yesterdays "fix" and put a more permanant solution in place, so everything should be fine

[#8]

Sorry James but we're back to yesterday's crawl again

[#9]

It seems fine for me?

[#10]

and here max so far 5 secs - yesterday 90 plus

[#11]

I'll be bringing the other half of the platform back online soon (once change control is cleared).
With regards to the credibility point from ReedRichards,
While it's hard to see from the outside, we are shuffling around big chunks of datacentre real estate and the changes are pretty major.  While you may only see 'x service is moving', the work we are doing is key to long term solid reliability of the services we are offering to you. 
The new datacentre includes a new network design that increases fault tolerance, security and stability (as well as the all important maintainability and failure recovery), but as we are doing it a datacentre at a time, where the new interacts with the old (this is the first new sheffield datacentre) there may be friction we haven't accounted for in our testing. 
Understandably it means that sometimes these things aren't 100% smooth but it's a tradeoff in terms of letting you know the potential impact when we move things vs. the odd thing glitching while we iron out the new design.  I'm sure overall you'll agree that you'd rather us purge the legacy unreliable aspects from our platforms as it means that in the main, everything will continue to get more reliable from your perspective.
M

[#12]

Changes rolled now; back on two sites.
M.

[#13]

I am not getting email notifications this morning of topics I am subscribed to.  Checked my settings and they are OK.  Is this anything to do with the other problems we've had this week?

[#14]

Since posting my message #27 yesterday the problem hasn't been resolved.  I am getting some notifications but not all.

[#15]

Interesting - that may be due to something unrelated, I'll have a dig.
M