FastMail down!

[Tom Gallagher]

Originally Posted by Adon

I can't understand the problem here, email is not designed for urgent messaging (that's what phones are for), what disaster can there possibly be if you can't access your mail for an hour or a few. First it happens so rarely and even if it does happen, it's even less likely you will be affected since it can happen at the time when you sleep or simply do not access your mailbox, second if you need something important delivered/replied to fast, you really should use the phone.

LMAO.......

[Berenburger]

The facts.

[CyberSaint]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

The facts.

A very strong case for Fastmail's reliability, despite perceptions to the contrary. Thanks.

[William9]

I'm seeing several downtimes. Where is the comparison with other providers?

[Sherry]

Originally Posted by William9

I'm seeing several downtimes. Where is the comparison with other providers?

I'm not sure if other providers are as open with their downtimes as FM is??? I read all the EMD forums and I see a lot of posts where people are saying "I can't log into Blah". They could be talking about Yahoo, Gmail or any of the others so either a section of those services is down or they have an individual network problem.

Sherry

[hadaso]

It's not only uptime (as in "I can login into my mailbox"). It's also data integrity, that is I would find in my inbox everything that was delivered to me, unless I deleted it. When there was a multi-day outage many years ago, FastMail said they could have the system up and running much earlier at the cost of loss of a few messages to some users, and they chose not to lose data. Then they worked hard and made a replication system that replicates each piece of data separately and verifies that all the copies of each piece of data are identical. And they said that when an email store fails the system can automatically switch within seconds to the replica and users will never notice it, but they chose not to use this choice and do this kind of switching manually so that a human being can have a look and make sure that it's OK to switch. This results in "outages" of a few minutes instead of a few seconds but in less risk of lost data.

Now a big email provider can have a system that's practically always accessible. But it can be done at the cost of some risk to data. No one can beat Google at redundancy of their systems: everything is replicated in several machines in several places around the world. Every day thousands of these machines die and the system keeps working. However all this was built for making sure that anyone at any time can type a search term and get relevant results. Not all relevant results (and also so that ads are always served, but Google doesn't lose much if sometimes the most relevant ad is not placed at the most appropriate place. They just need it to work most of the time). So how can one be sure that no single email message is lost between Gmail logins?

Of course no system is 100% fool proof. But FastMail at least claims that data integrity is a top priority and tells what steps it takes to ensure no data is lost. So it should be understood that uptime is not the first and only priority.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by hadaso

It's not only uptime (as in "I can login into my mailbox"). It's also data integrity, that is I would find in my inbox everything that was delivered to me, unless I deleted it. When there was a multi-day outage many years ago, FastMail said they could have the system up and running much earlier at the cost of loss of a few messages to some users, and they chose not to lose data. Then they worked hard and made a replication system that replicates each piece of data separately and verifies that all the copies of each piece of data are identical. And they said that when an email store fails the system can automatically switch within seconds to the replica and users will never notice it, but they chose not to use this choice and do this kind of switching manually so that a human being can have a look and make sure that it's OK to switch. This results in "outages" of a few minutes instead of a few seconds but in less risk of lost data.

Now a big email provider can have a system that's practically always accessible. But it can be done at the cost of some risk to data. No one can beat Google at redundancy of their systems: everything is replicated in several machines in several places around the world. Every day thousands of these machines die and the system keeps working. However all this was built for making sure that anyone at any time can type a search term and get relevant results. Not all relevant results (and also so that ads are always served, but Google doesn't lose much if sometimes the most relevant ad is not placed at the most appropriate place. They just need it to work most of the time). So how can one be sure that no single email message is lost between Gmail logins?

Of course no system is 100% fool proof. But FastMail at least claims that data integrity is a top priority and tells what steps it takes to ensure no data is lost. So it should be understood that uptime is not the first and only priority.

I definitely agree that avoiding lost messages is the first priority. Occasional short outages to achieve that are definitely acceptable. However, it is a matter of degree. I am disappointed with the length of recent outages. If we settle into a period of outages lasting an hour on a regular basis, I shall have to seriously consider alternatives. Although all my customers for whom email is critical have backup accounts, messages are not well organized on the backup. It is fine for checking urgent incoming emails when Fastmail is occasionally unavailable, but not for extended working.