Is the site down for everyone else ?

yep, for me also and if you look over there>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

SY

Yes, it's not working. StockXpert also, but at least I get a page saying it's in maintenance.

Regards,
Adelaide

Haven't you noticed?  It goes down every night about this time.  I know, because it coincides with my morning upload time here in Australia - about 8.00am Australia time, Dreamstime goes off-line for an hour or two.  Every day.

Son of a %#!h!     I've got about 48 hours to finish a website for a client and I can't download the photos.  This happens each and every rare time I have a design job..... UGH.  I'm sorry folks.  It's my fault.

down here too,and it's been more than an hour,so I don't think it's something planned before hand,I mean perhaps not a maintenace work.

I think Freezingpics's new hot seller caused the outage: he was selling it so often that it singlehandedly crashed the server farm ... what nerve!

Quote from: hatman12 on August 01, 2007, 23:22
Haven't you noticed?  It goes down every night about this time.  I know, because it coincides with my morning upload time here in Australia - about 8.00am Australia time, Dreamstime goes off-line for an hour or two.  Every day.

I don't observe this problem.  I check sites at night (about 6-7pm my time, GMT-3), and rarely have a problem with DT (actually rarely with any site).

Regards,
Adelaide

First time I've seen DT go down like that in past two months and I also check it pretty regularly. This actually looks like a pretty major outage, that could have been caused either by a DOS or hardware failure. After all it's been down for almost eight hours now and no signs of revival any time soon.

Sunspots? 

A bit odd that a large 'E' business wouldn't have a contingency with a secondary host to put up a 'Sorry, we're broke' message, a bit like the StockXpert one.

(Also odd that StockXpert should be down this long for a planned upgrade, but that's should be in the other forum.. )

We had a serious hardware crash and our engineers are currently restoring the system and uploading backup files. Some of the data seems to be permanently affected, but we try to limit the disaster as much as possible. As it looks it will take at least a few more hours, this is definitely the most severe accident that happened.
We are sorry for the downtime and hope to be back online soon. Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks for letting us know.  I hope you manage to get it all sorted out soon.

Thanks Achilles.

How professional.

FT could do with taking a few customer service lessons from Dreamstime.......

Honesty is a wonderful thing, thanks for posting an update in here and good luck in getting it sorted. Having managed large networks and servers I know where you guys are coming from so no pressure.

Quote from: hatman12 on August 02, 2007, 07:12
Thanks Achilles.

How professional.

FT could do with taking a few customer service lessons from Dreamstime.......

Very professional... and nice blank home page .
I start to worry about all this microstock world. It seems to be little amateurish. No clustering, no fast backup, no informations.

rene has a valid point...

I don't want to knock DT, and I appreciate that Achilles has posted to this forum to tell us what's going on.  But.  (There's always a but).

DT's DNS servers are currently off the net, which means they have either lost quite a bit of hardware, their connection to the net, or there is no redundancy in their connection to the web and a $5 cable has failed.  (Or they didn't pay their hosting bill, but I doubt that!  )

The actual fault is academic, if I were part of DT management I'd be asking where the heck is the redundant offsite DNS so you can at least redirect to a 'Please call back later' page?  For a business that is 100% online this does seem like a major failing.

My 'Day job' is as an IS manager, and I used to own and run a web hosting business, so I feel qualified to say that the DT IT staff need a good smack on the back for the head for dropping the ball somewhere.

Yes it can take a long time to fix things and restore 100's of Gb of data, yes you have to wait for vendors to supply replacement gear..   But tertiary DNS and hosting with a reputable hosting company costs a few $ a month, and would have saved a great deal of lost face.

We already saw another microstock company demonstrate an apparent total lack of project management methodology and IT maturity with an upgrade gone wrong this year.

Sitting on the fence, as I am, I suspect this a case of IT centric companies not paying enough attention to how most large businesses treat DR and business continuity in their systems.

Just my 2c worth...

Chellyar your thoughts are shared. Dreamstime's  severs are located in what is advertised as the biggest provider in the US, with state of the art technology.

I am afraid that I cannot share how we are structured but all requirements and standards are met on our side, with backups put into place and proper disaster recovery. The problem doesn't reside on our side, nor on our own techs team. What we do is to have everyone involved in fixing this problem ASAP as well as ensuring this will not happen again.

Some of the data seems to be permanently affected?  Don't like the sound of that!

Quote from: Achilles on August 02, 2007, 07:04
... serious hardware crash..... data...permanently affected.....disaster......the most severe accident.....

Thanks, Achilles, but YIKES!!

Yikes! I just requested for a payout yesterday.

I hope everything turns out fine.

oh my!  this does not sound good

Quote from: ptlee on August 02, 2007, 15:07
Yikes! I just requested for a payout yesterday.

I hope everything turns out fine.

Yeah.  Same here. 

I have also asked for a pay-out a couple of days ago.

Let's hope the extent of the data loss is small.  I suppose a good system won't lose more than a few minutes of new information.  As long as they haven't hired the same IT people as FT did....

Regards,
Adelaide

I was all set to buy a new camera after this payout.  Oh, well.  Guess it'll have to wait. 

Quote from: Achilles on August 02, 2007, 12:23
Chellyar your thoughts are shared. Dreamstime's  severs are located in what is advertised as the biggest provider in the US, with state of the art technology.

I am afraid that I cannot share how we are structured but all requirements and standards are met on our side, with backups put into place and proper disaster recovery. The problem doesn't reside on our side, nor on our own techs team. What we do is to have everyone involved in fixing this problem ASAP as well as ensuring this will not happen again.

Achilles, check out Rackspace.com.  Our company (my day job) has used them for more than five years without a single incident.  They have fantastic customer support.  Of course if it's Rackspace you're using forget my suggestion.