I would like to offer my sincere apologies about the recent issue of photos not loading on Swingular. The issue started sometime around Friday August 3rd but was random for everyone. Everyone in our support staff was away for the weekend while reports of the issue started coming in.
By Saturday, the issue became wide spread.
By Monday morning, our staff returned and began to go through all the reports. After our initial review, we had determined that our photo processing server had hardware issues and failed.
At this point, we had only one choice and that was to rebuild the server from scratch. Because of this, to prevent further issues from occurring and to make our photo processing server more redundant and reliable, we decided to move it to the cloud.
By Monday night, we had completely rebuilt the photo processing server and it became operational. Photos began to appear again.
Over the following 24 hours, we had to tweak settings to make sure the server was working optimally so it may have been up and down briefly for certain periods.
We can now confirm that this issue has been fixed and that Swingular has returned back to normal operations.
We have recently made changes to our support staff and support procedures to make sure that we have someone on staff at all times. However, everyone had prior vacation obligations for this past weekend prior to the changes because of school returning for their kids. It was just bad timing that this server started having issues.
We assure you that moving forward, there will be at least one person available to try and respond quickly to any issues that arise as soon as we discover them. Of course, your help in reporting them to [email protected] will help speed things up.
Also, to prevent further issues with hardware failures, we will be gradually moving all of our systems into the cloud.
Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter and please do understand that we hear you and we do care.
Sincerely,
Robert
Owner/President of Swingular.com
By Saturday, the issue became wide spread.
By Monday morning, our staff returned and began to go through all the reports. After our initial review, we had determined that our photo processing server had hardware issues and failed.
At this point, we had only one choice and that was to rebuild the server from scratch. Because of this, to prevent further issues from occurring and to make our photo processing server more redundant and reliable, we decided to move it to the cloud.
By Monday night, we had completely rebuilt the photo processing server and it became operational. Photos began to appear again.
Over the following 24 hours, we had to tweak settings to make sure the server was working optimally so it may have been up and down briefly for certain periods.
We can now confirm that this issue has been fixed and that Swingular has returned back to normal operations.
We have recently made changes to our support staff and support procedures to make sure that we have someone on staff at all times. However, everyone had prior vacation obligations for this past weekend prior to the changes because of school returning for their kids. It was just bad timing that this server started having issues.
We assure you that moving forward, there will be at least one person available to try and respond quickly to any issues that arise as soon as we discover them. Of course, your help in reporting them to [email protected] will help speed things up.
Also, to prevent further issues with hardware failures, we will be gradually moving all of our systems into the cloud.
Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter and please do understand that we hear you and we do care.
Sincerely,
Robert
Owner/President of Swingular.com
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We are very frustrated with these kinds of issues seemingly always occurring. How do we know that this won't happen again?
We cannot guarantee that issues will never arise. It happens. Hardware fails, data gets corrupted. Unlike bigger companies like Facebook who have unlimited cash, we are a small company with limited cash flow. To keep our membership fees low, we have streamlined our operations to be as low cost as possible without affecting overall product satisfaction. This means we have a small support staff and we are using our own network of servers.
We've put pieces in place to try and prevent a single point of failure such as load balancers and clustered servers but that doesn't always prevent issues from arising. To help mitigate this issue in the future, we will be gradually moving away from dedicated hardware to cloud based servers. However, this will still not assure 100% uptime.
Our promise to you is that we will have any problems that arise fixed within 12 hours of discovery. This means that we need your help in reporting such issues. We have monitoring tools in place but sometimes these tools don't catch everything. Our best resource is our members. Please report any issues you experience to [email protected]. That is how we can catch these things quickly.
We are very frustrated with these kinds of issues seemingly always occurring. How do we know that this won't happen again?
We cannot guarantee that issues will never arise. It happens. Hardware fails, data gets corrupted. Unlike bigger companies like Facebook who have unlimited cash, we are a small company with limited cash flow. To keep our membership fees low, we have streamlined our operations to be as low cost as possible without affecting overall product satisfaction. This means we have a small support staff and we are using our own network of servers.
We've put pieces in place to try and prevent a single point of failure such as load balancers and clustered servers but that doesn't always prevent issues from arising. To help mitigate this issue in the future, we will be gradually moving away from dedicated hardware to cloud based servers. However, this will still not assure 100% uptime.
Our promise to you is that we will have any problems that arise fixed within 12 hours of discovery. This means that we need your help in reporting such issues. We have monitoring tools in place but sometimes these tools don't catch everything. Our best resource is our members. Please report any issues you experience to [email protected]. That is how we can catch these things quickly.
It worries me every time an issue like this arises? How do I know my personal information is safe?
The only issues we have ever experienced in our history are hardware failures or data corruption. Data corruption hasn't happened in over 10 years with Swingular. We have never had a breach and we have never been hacked.
Most breaches and hacks happen because of 2 things: 1, someone has been tricked into installing a virus that steals usernames and passwords to servers; 2, a server hasn't been updated with the latest security updates. Bigger companies have more issues with password stealing because they have more employees. The more hands in the pot, the bigger chances of a breach or hack.
For 1, only one person on our staff has access to the servers with your data on it. This person has been trained on the latest phishing techniques and security issues. They also only access servers when necessary and from a highly secured client computer.
For 2, we constantly update our servers with the latest security patches. We also do regular penetration tests to make sure our servers and our code are secure.
Also, we don't ask you for any personally identifiable information, nor do we store any of your billing details. We use a highly respectable third party billing company and we keep your information separate from Swingular so that you cannot be linked back to us.
We assure you that your data is safe with us and that we will do anything and everything to protect our members privacy and security. That is our number one initiative.
The only issues we have ever experienced in our history are hardware failures or data corruption. Data corruption hasn't happened in over 10 years with Swingular. We have never had a breach and we have never been hacked.
Most breaches and hacks happen because of 2 things: 1, someone has been tricked into installing a virus that steals usernames and passwords to servers; 2, a server hasn't been updated with the latest security updates. Bigger companies have more issues with password stealing because they have more employees. The more hands in the pot, the bigger chances of a breach or hack.
For 1, only one person on our staff has access to the servers with your data on it. This person has been trained on the latest phishing techniques and security issues. They also only access servers when necessary and from a highly secured client computer.
For 2, we constantly update our servers with the latest security patches. We also do regular penetration tests to make sure our servers and our code are secure.
Also, we don't ask you for any personally identifiable information, nor do we store any of your billing details. We use a highly respectable third party billing company and we keep your information separate from Swingular so that you cannot be linked back to us.
We assure you that your data is safe with us and that we will do anything and everything to protect our members privacy and security. That is our number one initiative.
Nice!
Hey Thanks!
Getting background information on what happened and hearing that there is already changes being made to assist and fix issues in a more timely manner means a lot. Also, it is comforting to know that steps have been put into place to secure our personal information especially the financial side.
Hope everyone on your staff enjoyed their vacation time!
Xoxo,
C&A
Getting background information on what happened and hearing that there is already changes being made to assist and fix issues in a more timely manner means a lot. Also, it is comforting to know that steps have been put into place to secure our personal information especially the financial side.
Hope everyone on your staff enjoyed their vacation time!
Xoxo,
C&A
Thanks Rob and Staff! Communication is KEY! It's very nice to hear what happened and how you're working to prevent future failures.