Upcoming improvements

Continuous improvement is a necessary part of every process. SupplierSource itself is no exception. We’ve been taking steps over the last 10 months to improve our ability to provide continuous service and to be able to respond more quickly when there are problems. Significant improvements to streamline our software structure and reduce our hardware requirements have been made.

We’re now ready to make two more improvements. Each step will require a short period of downtime to make hardware and software upgrades.

We will start the upgrades early on Friday morning, July 18 and will be back up and running around 2:00 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Savings Time) the same day. We’ll verify that set of improvements for several days before we make the second set of changes early on Tuesday morning, July 22. This work should only require about 2-3 hours.

Then we’ll be ready for action.

Wild weather, but we’re back!

We’re sorry for our recent web site outage, but we are back up again.

We had some really wild weather last night that put us out of business until just a few minutes ago. Several folks were kind enough to ask nicely what was up and we do appreciate everyone’s patience.

We’re also thankful that it was just a brief weather episode and we are thinking of those who are continuing to endure so much more through tornadoes and flooding here in the US and typhoons and earthquakes in Myanmar and China. 

Knock on wood…

This better not be a jinx, but we’ve been perking right along these last few days and I think we’re back in the regular universe again. If anyone notices ongoing problems, please let us know and we’ll get them fixed.

Thank you for bearing with us!

The pictures are just in case you thought that trucks didn’t have fun! Check out the European Truck Racing web site. It has everything, including some awesome videos. Racing cars looks way safer!

 

Frustrated? YES!

We apologize for the ongoing technical issues that have kept the SupplierSource web site bouncing up and down like a yo-yo over the last few days. I’m not a software or network guy, so I won’t even try to explain the details (which keep changing hour by hour anyway). Moving the servers was intended to increase our up-time, but somehow we’ve ended up in a reverse universe.

I can’t make any promises, but we are all doing our best to resolve the current issues and restore both the site and our reliability as soon as possible.

Thank you for any patience you may still be able to muster.

We’re back up & running (finally)

Thank you for your patience (grrrrrr!!!) as we moved our servers. We do apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused with this outage. It took a lot longer than we expected and only some significant extra effort by the team got us back up by Saturday afternoon.

Several kind folks asked nicely what was up with the site and we (re)learned the importance of having a maintenance page up with an explanation. We’re sorry for that oversight. We did finally get a message up late on Friday.

There are still a couple things that we’re working on, but they shouldn’t affect your normal usage. PLEASE - do let us know if we missed something and you find it.

Now that the servers are in our building and more directly under our control, future incidents can be handled more quickly.

I got some grief because the last giant dump truck picture didn’t have any people in it to show how truly gigantic it was. Well, now you’ve got some people next to and on this GIANT Hitachi AC Diesel-Electric dump. Take that!

WARNING! SITE DOWN SOON!

  

Yikes! Did I scare ya? We’re not moving mountains, but we do have to move the SupplierSource servers. That means an actual real world physical shut down, disconnect, pick up, move to different town, put down, reconnect, turn on and test. Phew! I’m tired already and I’m not even doing it.

until

So, SupplierSource will officially be out of commission from Thursday, April 3 at 9:00a.m. EST until Friday, April 4 at 2:00p.m. EST. Please bear with us if it takes a nanosecond or two longer. If we can be back up sooner, we certainly will.

If you have any questions or want to come help please let us know! Hard hats ready?

P.S. The giant Komatsu dump truck doesn’t have anything to do with anything other than the fact that I love trucks and will use any excuse to put a truck into a posting.

P.P.S This is not an April Fool’s gag.

Bye, bye Beta

It has been pointed out to us by several people and from various perspectives, that people don’t like to use Beta software - like SupplierSource Beta. The fear is that the label “Beta” implies that the software is still flaky and unreliable.

Well, in my experience, that condition applies to all software, all the time. So, if anything, we’ve just been more honest. Like everything else: sometimes we break (Yes, the SupplierSource site is currently down and up and down again) and then we fix it (Whew! Holding steady now).

Another implication of having a “Beta” label is that a “Big, NEW version with All the Features You’ll EVER Want!” is just around the corner. Well, we don’t do that either. When something good is developed, we test it and then we release it and then we tell you about it.

After all that having been said, we would like to make an announcement:

Since we don’t have any royal trumpeters and the cannons are away being polished, the end of our “Beta” phase goes like this: “SupplierSource Beta is now SupplierSource”. Try not to hyperventilate.

There is a contest involved though. The first 10 people who can tell me, in 25 words or less, what the difference is between the following two images, will receive a great big “Thank you for paying attention!” from me.

    

Bye, bye Beta.

P.S. Just to help keep you comfortable, we will still occasionally have things that happen that we have to fix.

Whew! Holding steady now.

Yesterday was a wild one, but we seem to have gotten the “rogue mongrels” (some of you may know about those) and other software/hardware canines under control. This is what happened:

1st outage - 11:32pm est, 29 Jan - Matt takes the call - we’re back online shortly after that

2nd outage - 3:00am EST, 30 Jan - Matt gets woken up again - we’re back online shortly after that

3rd outage - 5:00am EST, 30 Jan - Matt can’t remember what planet he’s on, but takes the call - we’re back online shortly after that

4th outage - 6:50am EST, 30 Jan - down again - Matt staggers in to the mother ship - all hands on deck for the fight

Back up and holding steady at 2:00pm EST, 31 Jan. The outages were caused by crashes in our shared storage array which is used to host all customer data and images. No data was lost or compromised during all of the thrashing about.

Thank you for your patience (we hope) while we got things straightened out. We’ll be continuing to make improvemenets to prevent future problems. Matt hopes to get some extra sleep soon.

Yes, the SupplierSource website is currently down - and up - and down again…

Since late last night, our developers have not been getting much sleep as they have been working to fix a series of problems that have had the SupplierSource website down, then back up and then down again several times.

 We’re focused on getting things up and stable right now. Once that has been accomplished, I’ll provide more information about what happened.

 We’re certainly sorry for any inconvenience that this is causing and are doing our best to prevent it from happening again in the future.