10 ms·

Someone has to "approve" the status pages showing what's actually happening? From a customer perspective, it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflec

by saghm 4y ago

Someone has to "approve" the status pages showing what's actually happening? From a customer perspective, it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflect actual outages than to have them accidentally report an outage when there isn't one because no one really cares about what the status page says if they're not having issues. It's hard to see how the goal here could be anything other than trying to add plausible deniability for what would otherwise be obvious deception.

oefrha 4y ago
Exec approval for showing major outages on status dashboard is pretty much standard practice across large companies. The main differentiator is whether it’s approved within five minutes or two hours.
remus 4y ago
> it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflect actual outages than to have them accidentally report an outage when there isn't one because no one really cares about what the status page says if they're not having issues. I disagree. What if you're having issues and the status page is incorrectly reporting an incident? It would be easy to waste a load of time waiting for the status page to sort itself out, only to find out you've still got an issue.
UK-AL 4y ago
You can't approve a fact.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  well.... if that fact can be delayed by just a tiny bit... that's enough
- hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  As others noted, the so-called "status" pages of big service providers don't serve to reflect reality but to shape it. For actual status you need to consult independent monitoring services.
vineyardmike 4y ago
> it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflect actual outages than to have them accidentally report an outage when there isn't one Thats not the goal. > It's hard to see how the goal here could be anything other than trying to add plausible deniability for what would otherwise be obvious deception Thats the goal. The "status page" is considered the source of truth for most of the big contracts. If status-page=OK then your contract with them isn't violated. So changing the status page is a big deal, with real financial implications. The status page isn't a view into the SRE's tickets, its a declaration that the service isn't being provided.
- mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
  Utter rubbish. Major contracts have account managers and it all gets hashed out 1-1.
  - squeaky-clean 4y ago
    Don't know why this was downvoted. We've definitely been able to provide proof of an outage when the status page showed otherwise and get a refund in the form of server credits by contacting them directly. For all 3 big vendors, AWS, Azure, GCP
    - RajT88 4y ago
      Agree here as well. It's usually not that hard to provide based on the many, many metrics Azure resources emit that their SLA was breached. What might be happening is that there is fine print you have to read and be in compliance with in order to be eligible for the SLA. For example, look at all the conditions which have to be met for a breach of VM SLA in Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/virtual-machines/v1_9/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/virtual-... Hidden in the SLA details is typically hints on how you can become more resilient in the cloud. So it pays to read the SLA details and really deeply understand what they are telling you.

by saghm 4y ago

oefrha 4y ago

Exec approval for showing major outages on status dashboard is pretty much standard practice across large companies. The main differentiator is whether it’s approved within five minutes or two hours.

remus 4y ago

> it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflect actual outages than to have them accidentally report an outage when there isn't one because no one really cares about what the status page says if they're not having issues. I disagree. What if you're having issues and the status page is incorrectly reporting an incident? It would be easy to waste a load of time waiting for the status page to sort itself out, only to find out you've still got an issue.

UK-AL 4y ago

You can't approve a fact.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
well.... if that fact can be delayed by just a tiny bit... that's enough
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
As others noted, the so-called "status" pages of big service providers don't serve to reflect reality but to shape it. For actual status you need to consult independent monitoring services.

vineyardmike 4y ago

> it seems far worse to have status pages fail to reflect actual outages than to have them accidentally report an outage when there isn't one Thats not the goal. > It's hard to see how the goal here could be anything other than trying to add plausible deniability for what would otherwise be obvious deception Thats the goal. The "status page" is considered the source of truth for most of the big contracts. If status-page=OK then your contract with them isn't violated. So changing the status page is a big deal, with real financial implications. The status page isn't a view into the SRE's tickets, its a declaration that the service isn't being provided.

mattclarkdotnet 4y ago
Utter rubbish. Major contracts have account managers and it all gets hashed out 1-1.
- squeaky-clean 4y ago
  Don't know why this was downvoted. We've definitely been able to provide proof of an outage when the status page showed otherwise and get a refund in the form of server credits by contacting them directly. For all 3 big vendors, AWS, Azure, GCP
  - RajT88 4y ago
    Agree here as well. It's usually not that hard to provide based on the many, many metrics Azure resources emit that their SLA was breached. What might be happening is that there is fine print you have to read and be in compliance with in order to be eligible for the SLA. For example, look at all the conditions which have to be met for a breach of VM SLA in Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/virtual-machines/v1_9/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/virtual-... Hidden in the SLA details is typically hints on how you can become more resilient in the cloud. So it pays to read the SLA details and really deeply understand what they are telling you.