GC.com down

[RuffRidr]

All this morning I have noticed that gc.com has been down. Looking at other organizations sites, it looks like it has been down since 5 in the morning. This has got me thinking. Does anybody else see a benefit in mirroring our caches to our local organization site? Maybe not the logs and everything, but at least the cache data, so we could still search for local caches during events like this.

Just a thought...

--RuffRidr

[Gaddiel]

All this morning I have noticed that gc.com has been down. Looking at other organizations sites, it looks like it has been down since 5 in the morning. This has got me thinking. Does anybody else see a benefit in mirroring our caches to our local organization site? Maybe not the logs and everything, but at least the cache data, so we could still search for local caches during events like this.

Just a thought...

--RuffRidr

It's funny that you should mention this, cuz I had the same thought this morning, when I saw that GC.com was down. However, after I thought about this a little bit, I don't really think that mirroring would be warranted, at least not by local organizations. This kind of service would go WAY beyond serving the web page. Can you imagine the nightmare of trying to keep even the Arkansas data updated constantly? Besides, as far as I can tell, there's really nothing critical that we do that can't wait a few hours for them to come back up. Yeah, it's inconvenient, but not a show-stopper. Just my opinion.

Now, on the other hand, from GC.com's point of view, I would DEFINITELY be looking for some kind of backup plan!

[Gaddiel]

Here's the explanation from Jeremy:

"The issue is related to the overloaded firewall. We purchased a new one a while ago but are still working on some vendor issues with it before we can make it live. In the meantime we have to occasionally reboot the firewall so it can correct.

Firewalls are one of those painful requirements for running a web site. Without it we could be hacked to death, and with it we experience a single point of failure. We normally catch it but it was not the case yesterday until later.

Hopefully we can get our vendor issues resolved soon, since the more powerful machine is sitting there waiting to be used."

The problem here seems to be the "single point of failure". We've been going through some of the same type problems where I work, but the big difference is that GC.com is global. Seems that they would have a secondary location by now... Oh well. As one of my co-workers is fond of saying, "If it was easy, anybody could do it..."

[Phantom_491]

I just checked and it's back up.

[southdeltan]

I don't think it's warranted. I've been geocaching for almost 2 years now and the website has been "totally" down very rarely.

On another note - it would require that you got permission from Geocaching.com - because all data that is on their website cannot be gathered because it violates the terms of service. (Yes, the CACHE belongs to you, and so does the information, but you can't go backing up everything (I mean their database) and putting in on a website - you'll be violating their info). Basically - it would be illegal unless you had permission and the odds of anybody getting the permission are pretty slim.

That doesn't mean you can't list your cache whever you want to - but it would require that this site had a listing service that people put their OWN caches in. I just don't see how that's necessary.

-----

I think the problem they're having is that the outtage occured during the middle of the night their time (Seattle) and they don't have somebody monitoring it 24/7. It was only down a few hours, so no big deal - I doubt many people are rushing to get coordinates in the morning on a weekday...

sd

[RuffRidr]

On another note - it would require that you got permission from Geocaching.com - because all data that is on their website cannot be gathered because it violates the terms of service. (Yes, the CACHE belongs to you, and so does the information, but you can't go backing up everything (I mean their database) and putting in on a website - you'll be violating their info). Basically - it would be illegal unless you had permission and the odds of anybody getting the permission are pretty slim.


I just wanted to clarify that I didn't intend to have a direct copy of GC.com's database. I figured we'd have to submit here as well as GC.com. Kinda like if you want to list your cache on navicache.

The more I think about it tho, the more I agree it would be a pain in the ass. It would be very hard to keep the 2 even half way synchronized. I guess gc.com has just really been frustrating me lately. They have had a significant amount of downtime recently. If the company I work for had the same downtime they are seeing, I would have been fired long ago. And don't even get me started on the rest of their 'customer service'.

Sorry, I'll shut up now.
--RuffRidr

[arkansas_stickerdude]

My coperate office has 4 servers and they are all mirrored so if one goes down there is 3 backups we hardly ever go down. With as much down time that I've seen it might be a good idea for GC.com to invest in another server.

[southdeltan]

GC.com is a much smaller company than you may realize - they don't have a lot of people working for them (Jeremy is the only "full" time employ) and they don't have as much in the way of resources as some think. It's very much a "labor of love" that the site even exists.

sd