Hip and cool web hosting provider Rackspace suffered a two-hour outage yesterday and the blowback from the blogosphere is fierce (see the chatter on Techmeme.) A truck driver drove into a power transformer knocking out power to Rackspace's Dallas hosting facility and shutting down some high-profile blogs in the process, as Valleywag notes.
This incident has prompted Om Malik to note that the Internet infrastructure "is fragile as a fine porcelain cup on the roof of a car zipping across a pot-holed goat track" for so many sites to be taken down by a single errant truck.
But, to everybody complaining about a two-hour outage at Rackspace I say: you had it good. The outage was only two hours. Although some folks complained that Rackspace, a big blogger hosting provider, didn't throw up a blog itself to discuss the outage, the company, at least, is apologetic and wants to make amends.
It could have been worse. Your hosting company might have been Navisite (Nasdaq: Navi), which shut down nearly 200,000 web sites (and email for thousands of clients) for four days, and in some cases seven days. As of yesterday morning, a number of small businesses were still coping with outages caused by the Andover, MA-based company.
Regular readers followed my outraged posts on this incident last week (for list of posts see here.) Unlike the outage at Rackspace, the multi-day outage at Navisite was not an act of G-d. It was a result of a hideously botched data center migration that the publicly traded company rushed through following its acquisition of top-notch hoster Alabanza.
During the crisis, Navisite didn't answer customer phone calls or emails -- in fact the company initially shut down its 1-800 help lines because all personnel were being diverted to manage the situation.. Execs only rarely joined conference calls to explain the situation. Most importantly, Navisite wasn't staffed to handle the situation it itself created and despite company statements to the contrary, Navisite returned very few phone calls or emails from frantic customers.
The massive devastation caused by Navisite for thousands of small businesses is a great untold story. No apologies were forthcoming from the company until last Friday, fully seven days after the outage began, and even then the company was squirrelly as all get-out (The CEO Arthur Becker had the nerve to point out that the new servers are good for the environment, little consolation to thousands of businesses that might fail as a result of Navisite's screw-up).
Navisite still won't accept responsibilty for what it did. One company executive maintained yesterday that Navisite "did the best it could with a bad situation" and even said that some customers "thanked us for working around the clock and thanked the support personnel and the people who took their phone calls. They complimented them in every possible way."
It's amazing that Navisite is even now trying to peddle a load of hooey about the "bad situation," which the company consistently fails to note was a situation that it itself created. Navisite execs often talk about "unforeseen events" as if they were acts of G-d akin to the situation that shutdown Rackspace. Don't believe it for a second. The "unforeseen events" were Navisite's inability to bring up the websites. Period.
In contrast to Navisite, Rackspace has offered a detailed explanation of what happened. It promises "if something goes wrong we will rise to the occasion, take action, resolve the issue and accept responsibility." It wants to hear from customers who have complaints. The company doesn't appear to be dodging or weaving or weaseling out of its obligations in a situation that was not under its control. And the outage was only two hours.
I repeat: to everybody affected by the Rackspace two-hour outage, you had it good.
Cynthia Brumfield at 8:47 AM|Comments(0)
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