Captains-

 

I am replacing Ryan's earlier message from yesterday with some updated information.

 

We are seeing a significant slowing of communications to one of the servers involved in our technical support and license handling processes.

 

The slowdown is being investigated, but as of right now appears to be related to some type of traffic flow problem outside of the data center at which this particular machine resides. 

 

That is what they are telling us at the moment- but I will be candid and tell you that I suspect the failure is actually inside that data center- and we are working to prove that to them at this moment.

 

We have our own server techs working to evaluate the issue and once it is resolved- things will return to normal.  Until then, we appreciate your patience.

 

IMPACTED SERVICES:

==================

- Product activation is slow for all customers and unavailable for others.

- Technical Support is unable to process tickets or reply to customer requests.

- Licenses may not be added to purchase records for new purchases made during this outage.

 

When things start flowing again, we will make a run through the support tickets to clean up any issues, and we'll also be checking through orders to make sure anyone who didn't get an activation key is handled as quickly as possible.

 

As I said- this isn't something on our own system- but we are certainly being impacted by it.

 

We will update you when more information becomes available.

 

 

That awkward moment when you get an e-mail on your iPhone and the preview says "rsrandazzo just posted a topic, 11APR13 -..) to find it's about this and not the 777..  :lol:  :( 

This server problem sounds every serious

upset....but will still wait for an update...!!!

Gents-

 

The good news is that the problem hardware has been identified.

 

As we began to suspect last night, the problem is inside the datacenter in LA where this server lives.

 

The center is in the process of effecting repairs and they have told us to expect a few minutes of down-time as they R+R the faulty equipment.

 

I do not anticipate babysitting them all night, so it is likely that they problem will be resolved before the sun comes up- and we'll update this thread in the morning...

 

For anyone having trouble with the services I listed above- **if your problem requires input from our tech support team** we will get to you within 24hrs....   Our experience has been that hiccups like this tend to generate quite a bit of cleanup work...

 

At any rate- thanks again for your patience. 

 

For those that appreciate irony:  We have spent the past couple of weeks acquiring a significant amount of additional processing, load balancing and mirroring in order to carry the 777 release without trouble.  On Wednesday I authorized the expenditure to mirror and load balance this particular server so that we don't have a bottleneck on support traffic...  At the time, I wondered if it was a needless expenditure since this server is the least utilized in the fleet.

 

Now we know, don't we?  :ph34r:

Just remember to go through your checklists this time lol... :ph34r:

*777 Checklist*

 

...

- THE LINE -

> Cleared for release

 

so we did get a small update after all....

I am so exciting to hear "you know"

 

 

On Wednesday I authorized the expenditure to mirror and load balance this particular server so that we don't have a bottleneck on support traffic... At the time, I wondered if it was a needless expenditure since this server is the least utilized in the fleet.

 

Robert, just out of sheer morbid curiosity, can you possibly tell us approximately how much PMDG has spent on research and development and IT upgrades, etc? I can't imagine that your sales cover your expenditures completely. Do you guys at PMDG put in some of your own hard-earned to keep the passion alive and the products flowing?

Hey everyone - I stayed up waiting for it to start working again. Happy to report that it did about 2 hours ago and I've gotten through all of the Redownloads and License Resets. I'll get to the general support question stuff tomorrow.

thanks Ryan !!!

Unfortunately the problems are back now this afternoon - it's definitely a hardware issue with the server machine itself and they're trying to figure out what triggers it now.

Unfortunately the problems are back now this afternoon - it's definitely a hardware issue with the server machine itself and they're trying to figure out what triggers it now.

The joy of technology!

Tell them to feed their gerbals.