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Where has UD gone????

A

Anderu

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - August 2006
Joined
Jun 19, 2001
Messages
1,189
I noticed last night that some of my units could not send in results after completion, so I tried going to the main site (www.grid.org), to see what was happening. They have server maintenance, and breakdowns from time to time, and they are always good about communicating with their followers through their forums.

To my surprise, I was unable to get to www.grid.org, nor was I able to get to their forum site either. Both cannot be pinged, or trace routed. I am not sure if I am looking at some kind of DNS problem from my internet provider (Comcast on the west coast), or if there is something wrong out there, like some kind of DOS attack or something.

Anybody else able to get to the site or the forums for UD, or have any information about what is going on?
 
Chances are it's probably some sort of problem with their host, it started some time yesterday, technically it could be anything from a provider problem to street crews cutting through the cable/power cables.

I read the forums semi regular and didn't see any mention of problems or possible downtime posted(of course it's been a few days since I last checked), so the best we can really do is be patient and wait for whatever problem it is to resolve itself.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
Can anyone else get to the sites, or is that just me?

 
I'm having the problem too, not just at my home connection but on campus at UCF as well.

It's down alright.

Aaaagh, all the wasted cycles :p

 
I'm having problems as well. I also had problems about two weeks ago. I guess it is to be expected with large distributed computing projects.

I wish I could download another WU and keep on crunching.

 
Yeah, grid.org isn't working for me either. It looks like a DNS problem at least, and possibly a connectivity problem on their end. Yet another reason serious hosts should be multihomed.

 
If you can get to your UD boxen, and are worried about wasted cycles, you could install F@H temporarily until UD gets back up. This way your computer would keep crunching for a good cause.

MN Scout
 
It is the strangest thing. Their servers have been offline before, but the site itself and the forums were always there to tell you what was happening, and to give a reasonablely accurate guesstimate as to when they would be back.

This is the first time in the four year history of the project that this has happend, that I am aware of. Kinda scarry.
 
I have to admit, its quite strange. I just tried to get to the site and nothing at all.... :confused:
 
Like I said before chances are their ISP is having problems, they're having server problems, or possibly the power went down for some reason, when the [H] servers have been knocked offline in the past you got the same type response.

Who knows, maybe they are completely replacing their servers with a brand new setup, anyway, nothing to worry about until there is something to worry about.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
King_N said:
Who knows, maybe they are completely replacing their servers with a brand new setup, anyway, nothing to worry about until there is something to worry about.
Click to expand...

Actually King, now that you mention it, I believe earlier this summer, there was some talk of a substantial infrastructure upgrade. It would be weird not to mention or publicize it, but I do remember the talk of it.
 
I considered installing F@H again (I've got more working on UD now than I do F@H), but my luck, the next morning UD would come back up.

Just have to wait it out. Good chance to use that idle core to convert about 50gb of divx/xvid/etc to DVD and compress another 50gb to 7zip though, i always feel guilty running that stuff when I've got UD & F@H fired up.



Edit: w007, tis alive! For you, at least. Good enough for me -- I'm still getting the error, but it's probably 'cause a half million clients are begging for work at the moment.
 
Hmmm. My clients are connecting and dumping WUs, but I still cannot hit the main page or the forums to see what was happening. Oh well. At least they got the important part online first.
 
Oddly enough, all my clients have connected and sent in their WUs -- but UD hasn't seen fit to send me any more work to do.

Maybe the servers will clear their backlog or whatever over night, and full steam ahead tomorrow; if we're lucky.

Only time I've seen a random outage like this was with BOINC projects a time or two, but I sort of expected that out of the Perpetual Beta

 
Well for the early morning update, my machine still hasn't sent its unit back in, has been backing off all night long. Also the main site is still out of commission. Hope they get it back up today!
 
No wasted cycles here. ;) My UD clients can't get work but my FAH clients are getting twice the CPU time they normally do. If you are serious about both projects you can run them at the same time, so if one ever fails the other is right there to pick up the clock cycles.

BTW new 24 port swtich and ethernet cables on the way so I should finally be able to get the rest of the farm online.
 
I completed a WU between the time I posted last night and now (a small 6h Rosetta one) but I can't get another one.

No fun

:mad:

 
Yup. I see that some of my units are asking for more work, and not able to get it again. As always, I keep on trying until it works.
 
Seems to be back now, www.grid.org showing a page.

And from the forums:

This is a reminder that Grid.org will be physically moving to a new facility this weekend. This will provide better reliability and is part of the Grid.org migration. Grid.org must be completely powered down in order to move. This will include the forum, member web, and the grid itself.

Since this is not a trivial outage, we cannot give an exact time that Grid.org will be down. The outage will take as long as it takes and it may be a day or two before everything is back online.
_________________
Robby Brewer
Senior Support Engineer
United Devices
Click to expand...
 
Do you check the forums every day, if not then chances are you missed the posting, I missed it myself.

However they stated in that message that this was a *reminder* so obviously they posted it would be down this weekend at some point.

Can't blame them for downtime or not informing us, when they obviously did and we just didn't pay attention.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
I don't go to the main site UNTIL there are problems. It is where I go to fnd out what the problems are. I imagine that most are in the same boat. So, what ever methodology they used to get the word out, it was to say the least, ineffective.

It would have been nice if they could have left some kind of redirect to a banner that said their move had begun, don't worry, be back in a couple of days. That would have been vastly superior to the "Website not available" or "Website cannot be displayed" message that I saw all day yesterday.

They still have some things to learn about customer service, but I will be there to tell them about it when they come back on-line.
 
King_N said:
Do you check the forums every day, if not then chances are you missed the posting, I missed it myself.

However they stated in that message that this was a *reminder* so obviously they posted it would be down this weekend at some point.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
Click to expand...
I don't check the UD forums at all since I find them less than helpful...but if it was posted, I am sure that someone here, either you, Anderu, or someone else would have seen it.

I'm not saying it wasn't...but if I was doing a major upgrade like this, I would make darn well sure folks new about it.
 
Guys, you have to remember something when it comes to the project it is *our* responsibility to keep ourselves informed, the *only* reason stanford's forum is available when they are down is because it was donated and run by a member of Free-DC(it is not owned or operated by stanford), otherwise they would be in the exact same boat during problems.

Also, when setting up UD did you accept the newsletter or deny it? There are 2 ways UD keeps it's members informed, the forum, or by the newsletter, if you didn't check the forum and refused the newsletter it's your fault, not theirs. Keep in mind that if UD sent e-mails to everyone as in bulk they could be hit for spamming.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
Agreed, Anderu. BOINC projects for example are very plain in their sites, and plainly say "Project is FUBAR. <A few technical points here about the grisly death of critical hardware components and/or horrible software screwups> Be back in a few days/weeks/months." F@H I don't know about -- I never seek anything out on their forums, anything happening there is usually recapped here.

I wouldn't think a redirect would've been too hard for them to do. I'd think a home PC could host a simple blank page with just a couple sentences of text on it explaining things.

I'd tell them about it too, but I got a feeling plenty of others will do it for me ;) Instead, back to quielty eating WUs.
 
Don't get me wrong. I am not angry over this. Just disappointed over their methodology of disseminating information this vital.

Just for the record, I am signed up for their newsletter, but I don't actually receive them that often, and I got nothing about this event. All of my information is current, so there is none of that going on.

Also, just going off the air completely, without leaving at least a redirect to say "Be back after our upgrade" was kind of unheard of. It would have been all the info I needed to move on with my little day, knowing the problem was not at my end, and that theirs was a bigger issue than the normal outage. Expectations would have been set correctly, so there is little room for disappointment. Where customer service is involved, I have always found that to be key to a sucessful relationship.

God knows, when one or the other has expectations that do not correspond with the other, communications get skewed, and problems get magnified beyond their original scope. In most cases, after the smoke clears and the analysis begins, it is usually discovered that some small gesture on the part of one of the involved parties would have been enough to put a whole different spin on the entire situation. In this case, the aforementioned redirect banner page put in the place where anyone wanting to know WTF, would have been sure to find and have their expectations reset to reality, and their anxiety put to rest. It would have made all the difference in the world.

I am not complaining, or deriding anyone. It is just something I plan to mention when they are live, so hopefully, the next time something like this comes along, they can do it better. I fully plan to be around to see it too. :cool:
 
But that was the thing, they *did* let people know.

http://forum.grid.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=18223

There are also forum posts by members that knew about the downtime here.

http://forum.grid.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=18229

and here.

http://forum.grid.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=18230

and here.

http://forum.grid.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=18232

Everyone but those of us that didn't read it, knew about it and expected it.

Also keep in mind about a year ago when hackers hit the [H] servers and brought them down, there was no re-direct until they were brought back on-line, you got the "Page can not be displayed" error. There was nothing whatsoever to tell us what happened until both [H] and the forums returned.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
Not to belabor the point, and I certainly am not trying to be argumentative King, but honestly, the difference between the [H] outage and this one is that one was unplanned, the other has apparently been planned for some time.

I do not disagree that they put things in their forums to announce what was going to happen, and when. But as I stated, I don't generally peruse those forums unless I am trying to determine the nature of a problem. Not to see what is in the "Coming Events" column. Being caught unaware, as I am sure most of us were, a little planning for what to do for the many users who did not feel the onus was on them to check on future downtimes, would not have been out of the question. Especially, since their sister site, UD.COM was still up. A redirect to a page hosted there with a quick explanation would not have been outside of their technical capabilities.

I work in IT, and I know from personal experience, that if you set out to shift the responsibility for problems to the users, well let us just say they don't tolerate it well. Even if it is true! And, justified or not, you end up looking bad in their eyes. What you end up with in the end is a big meeting on how this can be avoided in the future with a minimum of time and effort, and yet addresses the issue adequately. That is where I feel we are here.

Bottom line, if they felt like it was the responsibility of their users to browse their forums for a heretofore unprecedented type of planned downtime, they are within their rights to do so. But they do so at the expense of customer service, and a lot of wasted time and resources wasted on explaining it to the PO'd masses, when all it took was a simple "Moving to better quarters" sign on the door.

I am not picking on ya man! Really! I am nowhere near as mad about this as it might seem. I am just astounded at the suggestion that our not knowing about this was somehow our fault, and that a simple notification in the absence of their main site and forums was not technically possible for a company like this. It just twangs the old BS meter, ya know? ;)
 
King_N said:
Do you check the forums every day, if not then chances are you missed the posting, I missed it myself.

However they stated in that message that this was a *reminder* so obviously they posted it would be down this weekend at some point.

Can't blame them for downtime or not informing us, when they obviously did and we just didn't pay attention.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
Click to expand...
No, I can't honestly say I check UD on a regular basis. I had one machine that did UD, have to check why it quit doing so.

I'll have to agree with Anderu on one point. How much effort would it have taken to keep one piddlin' small server running, with it's only mission to post a "We're down, back in a few days!" static page? Hell, I've got that kind of hardware being punished as a FAH folder running Win98SE.

Come to think of it, that was the same machine running the UD client. Now I have to look ... :D



 
Fine, you guys are right and I'm wrong.

It's just funny how the *only* complaints I have seen so far have been here, I mean even some of the people that were bashing during the hardware failure are now praising UD for the complete hardware upgrade and the information they posted in advance letting everyone know about the downtime.

I know what it's like from their side of the fence, letting people know what's up and still getting bashed. When the [H] servers were hit by the hacker and everything was being upgraded and tested, I let everyone know that [H]ard|Folding would be down until [H] and the forums were back up and fully tested, yet regardless I still had to deal with all the complaints, the bashing, and the people that did not understand (and I quote "What on earth could have been so severe that it takes several months to bring back online?")

The fact of the matter is simple, no matter what they did they would still have someone bashing them. I'm sorry but I will not play a role in that, especially when they let people know what was going on we just missed it, UD has been the most reliable project that I have run, even with the hardware failure I don't think another project exists that has the overall uptime vs downtime ratio that UD has.

1 [H]ard Team, 2 Great Projects, 1 Common Goal..... The Cure



Webmaster: www.hardfolding.com
Lurker Extraordinaire
 
No one was bashing UD or comparing it to any other project. We just wanted to know what was going on, and now we know. There was nothing wrong with the discussion here.

Please stop with this US vs. THEM crap. It is uncalled for, especially in the context of this particular thread.
 
King, I have nothing but respect for you. You do things for these teams that nobody else does or would be willing to do. You have always been an adamant supporter of the UD project, and I have always appreciated that. I am not here to slam the project or you in any way.

At no time did I mean to sound like I was being critical of you or your position on UD. I just run a small farm of computers that do the UD project, and when things do not work, I go to the source to find out why. Generally, other than circumstance such as those, I seldom go to the main UD site or the forums. In fact, when I want to know my team stats, I go to [H]ardFolding.com to check!

However, on this occasion, when something went wrong, and the best and only source of information as to what was happening was not available, with nothing left behind to remind folks who had forgotten about the move, or inform those who were not aware, it left me in the position of assuming the worst, like a DOS attack or that there had been some catastrophic failure.

I have been with the UD project since just after it went live, and I have stuck with it through thick and thin. That is not about to change because of this situation. In fact, as soon as all this is cleared up, I am going to be making a push to take the #1 spot on the [H] team! But, that does not dismiss the way the situation was handled. As a customer, and that is what I consider myself in this situation, I expect to be informed about big events like this. My e-mail address has not changed in 4 years, and I am signed up for the news letter. I received nothing. There was nothing available, no resource at all, to tell me what the problem was when my clients stopped working.

I was glad that you remembered, and happier still that you shared that information with us to put our mind at ease. But I have a problem with the provider of any service, telling me as a customer, that it is my responsibility to find out about these things beforehand, and that in the absence of that, it is really my problem. If I treated my customers like that, I would have a lot less customers.

In light of this, I am not the type to get in a huff and take by business elsewhere. I would rather continue on, and offer suggestions as to how similar events could be handled better in the future, and to remind them that as a customer, my opinion of my service provider lives and dies by the way I perceive that I am being treated. If I find that treatement lacking, I feel responsible to point it out, so that it does not happen to others. That is just the way I roll.

In the end, the system is now coming back online, things will get back to normal, and all of this discussion will be rendered moot. We really will not know if anything improves until or unless something similar happens. I am betting that because of positive feedback, such as what I plan to provide when I get a moment to go by the UD forums, will make it a much more acceptable situation for the masses the next time around, and stand-up guys like yourself will keep holding our feet to the fire to make sure we know things that we did not have the time, opportunity, or inclination to find out for ourselves.

As always, a big thanks to King for his continued efforts for these teams! :cool:

 
Sorry Anderu, I knew about the outage but I wasn't coming here often. If I were here yesterday I would have answered why there was an outage. :p

I think both you and King had valid points. I kind of make it a habit to check UD forum at least once a month. After The Big Crash (TM) in the summer, Robby Brewer has taken upon himself to post weekly updates in the announcement forums, which IMHO has since improved the communication a lot. And he seemed to be checking the member-to-member forum as well.

What I think to improve the situation for team [H] is to have someone go to the UD forums more often and report back, kind of like a liason. This sounds obviously like King's job as captain, but we are not all 15 anymore so we won't have all day just to check UD forums. May be a few of us can try go there more often and report back in case of something big like this.

BTW, if you want to make some suggestions that will be listened to, try PM Robby instead of posting it in the m2m forum. There will be some rabid defenders bashing you no matter what. :)

As for me, this morning I still can't connect, Robby already reported some sporadic outages, so I will check when I get back home to see if it works again.

BTW^2, On the first page of m2m forum this morning, there were a couple of threads that talk about those gigantic Rosetta units, some were speculating points of 10,000 for those! :eek:
 
Flying Fox said:
BTW^2, On the first page of m2m forum this morning, there were a couple of threads that talk about those gigantic Rosetta units, some were speculating points of 10,000 for those! :eek:
Click to expand...

Looking forward to that.

Yeah though, I was just a little put off by the lack of notice, but I've now made it a point to check those weekly updates at the minimum, and start to skim the other forums occasionally. Now that it's back online (though I still havent got any WUs, but I'm patient, me and a half million other PCs), I'm over it. You're right King -- F@H has had its down time, and when I used to run BOINC, it had more than its share of either downtime or simply horrendous bugs.

I'm just looking forward to a new client. I've got UD on my X2 and my laptop, but only on one core on the X2. If they made an SMP-friendly client (or an easier way of doing it than exists currently -- too lazy), it'd get that second core, and a dual 2400+MP system as well. Any ETA on that? :D

 
It seems to be gone again. I have not been the Grid forums lately to see if this was planned, and the forums themselves as well as the Grid.org site seem to be unavailable as well.

Anybody heard anything on this one?

 
I've not heard anything myself, as I haven't checked their forums and homepage either. I can only speculate and guess that it's possibly some post-move maintenance or something of that sort.
 
Anderu said:
It seems to be gone again. I have not been the Grid forums lately to see if this was planned, and the forums themselves as well as the Grid.org site seem to be unavailable as well.
Click to expand...
Hey, if [H] can do it so can they, right? :p

 
Here is the scoop:

Dear Members,

We have incurred a major outage at our new facility due to a bad circuit breaker. This caused everything including the forums to be down for a while. We are in the process of recovering now. All of the servers are still not up which is why everyone is getting the backing off message. This will be corrected as soon as possible.

This outage is not related to the old hardware, but an issue related to the facility move. We did not anticipate this outage, but with a facility move of this magnitude, some temporary glitches are not surprising. Please bear with us while we work through these issues and again thank you for your contribution.
_________________
Robby Brewer
Senior Support Engineer
United Devices
Click to expand...
 
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