Microsoft Azure Outage: Leap Year?
Linked by David Adams on Thu 1st Mar 2012 22:53 UTC, submitted by judgen
Microsoft The outage on Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud computing platform that caused the government's G-Cloud service to go offline was the result of a calculation error caused by the extra day in February due to the leap year. Writing on the Azure blog the firm's corporate vice president for service and cloud, Bill Laing, said while the firm had still to fully determine the cause of the issue, the extra date in the month appeared the most likely cause.
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RE[2]: Wtf? Really?
by Soulbender on Fri 2nd Mar 2012 10:29 UTC in reply to "RE: Wtf? Really?"
Soulbender
Member since:
2005-08-18

This is not just picking up your ball and going, it's picking up the goal posts, the fences, the benches, the lawn and the parking lot, too.


In the short run you're probably right but the contract will be renegotiated at some point and I would make damn sure there's was a viable alternative at that point. Of course, I would probably not have bought into Azure in the first place so it's a bit moot.

And on top of that 1 day in 366 is probably well within agreed outage levels


Could be but on the other hand, isn't the cloud all about NOT having these kind of problems? You know, scalability, redundancy and all that jazz that the sales rep probably fed the gov't.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[3]: Wtf? Really?
by Lennie on Fri 2nd Mar 2012 11:21 in reply to "RE[2]: Wtf? Really?"
Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

It just means someone else, which is dedicated to the task, is doing that kind of work. That doesn't mean you get less problems.

It might mean you get more problems, because doing things at a large scale isn't easier.

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[4]: Wtf? Really?
by Soulbender on Fri 2nd Mar 2012 13:15 in reply to "RE[3]: Wtf? Really?"
Soulbender Member since:
2005-08-18

Right, but I'm sure the MS sales rep told them that if they used Azure they'll never have downtime and it would all be redundant and scalable and blah blah blah. If I had been told that and then the whole thing (and I mean the whole thing, not just a few of my VM's) goes down because they forgot about leap years I'd be mighty pissed.

Reply Parent Score: 3

RE[3]: Wtf? Really?
by B. Janssen on Fri 2nd Mar 2012 16:31 in reply to "RE[2]: Wtf? Really?"
B. Janssen Member since:
2006-10-11

I think, I wasn't clear. The FU is reprimandable, no doubt.

My line of thinking was that at some point in deployment you pass a point of no return where you are effectively locked-in into the cloud of someone else, because moving becomes very expensive, even more expensive than putting up with a FU.

I guess, what I'm really trying to say is that cloud services lock-in your data and you will suffer the consequences and like it. Beware of the cloud, seriously.

Reply Parent Score: 2