OT: The Logos outage, in light of Microsoft's recent Azure outage

http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/12/17/final-root-cause-analysis-and-improvement-areas-nov-18-azure-storage-service-interruption/

The comments sound familiar.

I had as much to say as anyone, I think, about how to assess the Logos outage. I tried to be even-handed (don't know if I succeeded), but I was somewhat critical.

What's interesting is that MS has taken all the steps folks on these forums suggested that Logos ought to have taken and/or ought to consider taking. None of that is a guarantee that human error or software bugs won't creep in and cause problems like these anyway.

Something for all of us to keep in mind.

Donnie

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Comments

Dan Francis

It is something to keep in mind, but I am just glad the core of Logos software works perfectly fine without Logos servers (not that i see that staying this way in 7 or 8). I just fear the day when a connection is needed to do anything. I do not know if that day is near or far off but it does seem to be on the horizon of Logos.

-Dan

Lee

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676817#Comment_676817

According to that report, two critical procedures were not followed by the engineers. The outage was down to fundamental human error, at root level. No procedure can absolutely eradicate that kind of error! Most of the bank outages that happen around here are also down to this. [:)]

In any event, most Logos users I know would not be comfortable with going all cloud. The risks are too great.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676822#Comment_676822

Thanks Donnie

Russ White

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676817#Comment_676817

I think this is the most solid point to take away from this. We're all far too dependent on "the cloud" today -- and people are pushing more and more in that direction, as fast as possible. In the long run, though, there will always be outages. Keeping multiple copies might be difficult, but it's also the only realistic option.

BTW, from a data science perspective, the only reason to _not_ keep multiple distributed copies close to the user is because consistency is more important than accessibility -- but that's clearly not the case for Logos, unless users start being more concerned about having "immediate access to notes across devices" than they are access to the resources all the time. Of course, users often overestimate the value of convenience, and underestimate the chance of failure (can't we just specify 5 9's in the SLA and not worry about it?), to realize they're beating their heads against Turing's 1/r curve and the CAP theorem. Reality just isn't constructed in a way that you can get all three of "fast, cheap, quality," even in the virtual world.

Maybe it's all just there to keep us humble and realistic about what we can achieve -- but whatever the reason, there are real rules here, and not even Logos can overcome them. So -- be careful what you ask for when asking for a purely cloud based service. You might actually get it. And then regret it.

:-)

Russ

Lynden O. Williams

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676956#Comment_676956

Some features are cloud dependent and will probably always be (books.logos.com) who wants to download that on their computer with the size of today's harddrives?

During the outage, some features were unaccessible, but I was still able to work.

Russ White

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676966#Comment_676966

The right solution would be for Logos to institute the option of downloading selected books on all installs, just like it's available on smaller devices. That would let the user decide what's really important, and what's not.

:-)

Russ

Bruce Dunning

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676967#Comment_676967

The right solution would be for Logos to institute the option of downloading selected books on all installs, just like it's available on smaller devices. That would let the user decide what's really important, and what's not.

:-)

Russ

I like that suggestion.

mab

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/676999#Comment_676999

A lot of that description went over my head, but I got a chuckle about the Linux VMs not being affected compared to their Windows counterparts. As close to a tech amen from the Redmond cathedral as one might hear.

Donnie Hale

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/677044#Comment_677044

A lot of that description went over my head, but I got a chuckle about the Linux VMs not being affected compared to their Windows counterparts. As close to a tech amen from the Redmond cathedral as one might hear.

If that's your takeaway, I suggest you spend some time reading root cause analysis on the Amazon cloud outages over the past few years. The challenges are technology agnostic.

-Donnie

Mike Childs

I do not want my Bible software to ever be dependent upon the cloud (or the internet) to fully function. Why on earth would anyone want that. I want it to fully function on the hard drive of my device. Anything else is a step backwards in my opinion.