back to article C For Hell – Day Two: Outage misery continues for furious C4L customers

C4L has zero clue about when its network will return to normal service, nearly two days since the outage first struck the cloud provider. Customers have, in the meantime, continued to grouse about the severe disruption the Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (TITSUP) incident has caused to their businesses. Roughly …

  1. Just a geek
    Megaphone

    Whenever stuff like this hits companies they always use the same tired line "It's only a small number of people affected".

    No, it's a CUSTOMER that's affected. The people who pay your bills. Stop treating them like they don't matter and if the number really is that small why are you not pro-actively contacting them?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      There were a number of comments on the previous article about in-house versus hosted. I have also heard it from hosting providers.

      They often say, we can provide tier 1 security with multiple redundancy at vast expense that you would not be able to afford in house.

      However when things do go seriously wrong the cloud provider will be working on many customers starting from the biggest/loudest of those down to the smallest. If something goes wrong on our in house box 100% of the effort and multiple people will be working solely on our platform to bring it back up, who are also able to provide much better timescales for a fix or decide the best route (fix/recover from backup) for our company and not have to worry about "other clients".

  2. Hans 1

    Why is days of outage astonishing for an outfit like C4L and totally normal for another, like Azure ... someone care to explain ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Azure is Cloud, hence its mist and vapor!

      C4L is a data-center and co-location provider.. people use this to avoid the shit that they can expect with Cloud!

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "Our senior teams have completed an emergency workshop"

    They should start another. Anything to keep manglement out of the way while the techies get on with fixing it.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Since I posted that I realised that this TITSUP will have gained the visibility of senior management at client companies and the emergency workshop statement will be just what's needed to be reassuring at that level. Sad, really.

  4. Just a geek

    This is on the NOC page:

    "We are aware of additional problems at Slough where we have lost power to network devices. "

    UPS issues apparently.

  5. vmistery

    Fluidata need a new marketing team if they think spamming people in the middle of a crisis like that is OK.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Trollface

      It's called a business opportunity.

      Because these days, anything that helps you shaft your competitors is fair game.

      I'm sorry, you thought that morals are still important ? Come with me, I'll have you pass the Managerial Moral Vacuum Initiation certification, then you'll be fit to pass the Sold Your Soul To Capital certification and you'll make millions every year.

      Agreed ? Don't bother signing, Vlad here will seal the deal with a little bite. You don't mind needles, do you ?

  6. Mike 125

    And yet they continue making the 100% claim...

    "At C4L we specialise in providing 100% uptime and security to protect you from the results of disasters when using such a setup. We will ensure that all of your data remains available in the event of fire, theft or other data loss. We can also ensure that should you lose an office/site, then your staff can continue to work as before from either home or another location with no interruption."

    Still, they could have claimed 110%, like a footballer. So s'pose that's humble of them.

  7. Stevie

    Bah!

    "We are continuing to work as quickly as possible"

    Reminds me of the time a colleague in another city on whom I was waiting wrote my boss to say that they had been working diligently for six months.

    But hadn't actually done anything.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bah!

      Isn't that the norm for software development work in India?

      I got a quote from a large Indian Software House for a job that came in at 9 months work. By the time they'd bothered to quote I'd done the work in a total of 9 days.

  8. Fluidata

    Fluidata

    We can assure you that Fluidata look to sell based on its own capabilities and offerings, rather than focussing on issues that people may be having with a different provider.

    The social activity mentioned is an isolated incident and has been dealt with internally. In our industry, we must remember to remind sales executives of the technical reality of the situation, and in the process, avoid situations like this potentially developing again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fluidata

      How about apologizing to the recipient, and offering them free service for 2 years.... without then using it as marketing propaganda!

    2. Naselus

      Re: Fluidata

      "We can assure you that Fluidata look to sell based on its own capabilities and offerings, rather than focussing on issues that people may be having with a different provider."

      Well, everyone in Fluidata apart from the sales team, who appear to be up for trying to sell based on just about anything.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fluidata

      Well, as a company that uses others misfortunes to push sales, and then, rather than contacting the author of an article to provide comment, just splats into the comments area with a crappy PR spunkbubble, I've decided to add you to the list of companies to never use.

      Although the fact you describe your 'cold call spam' social media types as 'sales executives' was more than enough to do that anyway.

      Professionalism - you've heard of it.

  9. Aery_Evenfall

    A thought ......Jerry Springer style

    1, Fluid data, u lot need to be shot, its like an undertaker hanging around a hospital toting for business !

    2, Yes i probably understand its crap, but no one seems to give a rats a$$ when Microsoft, Amazon AWS etc etc goes down - let C4L stabilize their network - has anyone actually phoned them and offered any technical assistance ?!

    Maybe fluid data should as they "seem" to have the solution !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A thought ......Jerry Springer style

      "has anyone actually phoned them and offered any technical assistance ?!"

      Yeah sure that would go down well.

  10. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "its like an undertaker hanging around a hospital toting for business"

    Not quite, but nearly:

    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.705156,-1.853816,3a,18.7y,269.59h,90.68t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sMFiTpsnMYZQWhKS1zVGfCw!2e0?hl=en

    1. K

      Reminds of Southampton General..

      They have a small shopping arcade at the main entrance, and there is a Solicitors office there! And I'm certain the last time I was up there they had a sign offering advise for malpractice.

      1. Roj Blake Silver badge

        Re: Reminds of Southampton General..

        Why chase an ambulance when you know where it's going?

    2. RogerT

      "its like an undertaker hanging around a hospital toting for business"

      Not quite, but nearly:

      https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.705156,-1.853816,3a,18.7y,269.59h,90.68t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sMFiTpsnMYZQWhKS1zVGfCw!2e0?hl=en

      I like the way Google has blurred the posts of the road sign.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        BFD, heartbeat missing, services at a crossroads..

        Reading is far more space efficient-

        https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4518572,-0.9583071,3a,90y,221.4h,84.89t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sVAFg8c2Hbi2xTWO6fOEMcQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656?hl=en

        But is the C4L issue confirmed as being BFD related?

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "I like the way Google has blurred the posts of the road sign"

        And the sign on the ambulance.

    3. steogede

      Women and childrens[sic.] have their own unit?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Server restored....

    for how long?

  12. Velv
    Coffee/keyboard

    Come on El Reg, you just trot out these articles about service outages so you can slip in the Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (TITSUP) line, don't you?

    1. Sean Nevin

      You say that like it's a bad thing... :)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Leave fluidata alone, they're not the company causing 2.5 days of downtime for some customers - which includes packet loss to the point of disrupting services.

    This outage is related to the outage in july where they had to take a 100g link out of service. They put it back into service without knowing the cause of the original problem and sure enough the problem came back.

    I didnt think there were companies like c4l left anymore they usually die off

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like