Blog of Hamlesh

This is hilarious – well worth a watch!

I am waiting on some UK specific figures, but for now.

That is all!

Ecademy.com is a business networking site, its been around for a long time, but is lesser known than the likes of linkedin.

I often get asked by people, “why are you a blackstar, you don’t seem to be very active, isn’t it a waste?”. Phrased slightly differently, but usually the same gist. Blackstar’s are the highest level of membership on ecademy, and you pay what to some seems like quite a high membership fee for said membership.

Well for me, heres why.

02:46am – post market place advert offering deskspace in mayfair.

03:06am – search google for “mayfair deskspace“. SECOND result on the FIRST page.

From no where, to the first page of google in 20mins. Now what would that be worth to your business – enough said, now stop asking me stupid questions!

LinkedIn users looking to expand the number of quality connections they have make use of the toplinked.com service.

Blurb from the toplinked site;

Heres the August 2009′s invite me list: download.

Remember to say thank you by commenting and following me on twitter!

• The recovery work is taking place in 2 stages. We have installed ducting and surface level cables (3 x 276 fibre cables installed, 4 more are being installed) to divert cables away from the damaged area of the tunnel.
• The second stage is to retrieve cables from the tunnel to connect to the newly installed surface cables
• The first 96 x fibre cable has been successfully retrieved and jointed, restoring service to multiple transmission systems. Services to Poplar exchange have started to restore with full restoration expected imminently. This will mean that 999 service has been restored to all PSTN customers with contended access to normal voice service,
• The second 96 x fibre cable retrieval from manhole 144 is progressing slowly due to asbestos and poor air quality. Engineers in breathing apparatus have entered the manhole and are extracting the cable for jointing over ground. This cable will be completed around 05.00. on 7 April.
• Other restoration work using make-good capacity is continuing.
• In total there are 1836 fibres are to be repaired. The first 96 fibres represents 5% of the total.

In the world of “online” and hosting, theres a lot kicked around about uptime, SLA, and “the nines”, and no, I’m not talking about a set of characters from a J R Tolkien saga, I’m talking 99.99% uptime, nines.

Having built hosting infrastructures for smes and bluechips alike, running Berkeley IT, and a number of “online related” or more to the point “infrastructure related” companies/projects, this is something I am constantly at a loss trying to educate others on. Thanks to the media (as usual, misinformation and the general media, who would have thought!), Jo Public tends to think that his 99.9% SLA uptime guaranteed by his US based reseller shared hosting provider is where its at.

“My online plate shop is critical to my business, it will never go down with XYZ company, they offer 99.9% SLA”… this is the type of drivle that Mr Jo Public can be overheard spouting, and at which point I tend to want to walk over and bash him over the head with a large banana, repeatedly, preferably one that has been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Lets clear up a few things.

1. Nothing can truly be 100% uptime guaranteed, as something can always go wrong
2. A 100% uptime guarantee will cater for “force majoures” though, so dinosaurs coming back to live and rampaging through the datacenter, thats excluded from your guarantee
3. 99.999% uptime is achievable, and usual involves multi level redundancy, including physical datacenter diversity – ie: your plate shop being mirrored in a different physical datacenter
4. Usually you would need multi level redundancy for this, all the way up the chain, power, network, distribution, data, component – not something thats cheap to deliver – although for infrastructure people it is easy
5. 99.9% uptime SLA is usually what most providers would look to offer as standard
6. EXPECT TO PAY A PREMIUM FOR 99.999% - if you aren’t paying a premium, and your hoster claims the nines, then its about as likely to be “five nines” as I am to suddenly wake up and find that I have the powers of spider man
7. the SLA will usually outline your reimbursement if there is unscheduled downtime, if it doesn’t, move your business elsewhere, as the SLA and uptime claims just aren’t worth anything
8. that word in point 7 is important, “unscheduled“, most, if not all providers will exclude “scheduled maintenance” from their uptime guarantee, make sure that your SLA outlines how much notice will be given before this work, and how long work can realistically last for

Now to quantify a few things;

• 99.999% uptime SLA quantifies to 0.4 minutes of down time a month or 5 minutes of downtime per year
• 99.99% uptime, 4 minutes per month, 52 minutes per year
• 99.9% uptime, 43 minutes per month, 8 hours and 46 minutes per year
• anything less, theres no point

Pingdom have actually put a really nice little PDF guide together for this, check it out.

Sore more info on this for everyone, from BT, seems like the media are playing this down a fair bit – I wonder why…

{paste}

Update issued at 21:00 hours, April 5th 2009 A serious incident occurred on the afternoon of Saturday, 4th April, which has had a major impact on BT’s network in the Ilford area of East London.

A large thrust borer being used by a third party construction contractor on work not related to BT’s business penetrated one of our deep level tunnels in that area. The thrust borer has completely penetrated the tunnel and has caused material damage to both the copper and fibre cables in the tunnel.

BT engineers are working around the clock to restore service as soon as possible.

More than 70,000 PSTN customers were initially affected, though almost half of these have now been restored. Several thousand broadband lines, a large number of private circuits and Featurenet services have been impacted. Emergency and Police services were also affected but these services have been restored.

The tunnel is so badly damaged that it is not possible to work there pending structural support work and it is likely to be three days or more before that work can be completed and damage repair work undertaken.

In the meantime we are pursuing many alternative means of restoring service, including re-routing, establishing radio links and the diversion of circuits to surface level ducts. However, the scale of the damage means that only a proportion of the affected services can be restored this way. As a result, mobile STM-1 equipment is being moved to site to allow us to use dark fibre as a means of restoring service.

Emergency transmission equipment has been arriving on site and this is expected to continue through this evening. We expect this equipment will be set up and available to support service by midnight.

We should see the first cables installed by around 02.00 hours on April 6th. At that stage, we should be in a position to start connecting the transmission equipment and cabling. Further services restoration, managed by the BT war room, should begin soon after that.

Work will continue until all services are up and running, but it is unlikely that significant numbers of circuits will be working before 06:00hrs. There is still a lot of work to be done to fully recover the situation but work will continue throughout tomorrow.

MBORC (measures beyond our reasonable control) has been applied for.

More briefings will be provided as the incident progresses.

Q and A

Q. What has happened?

A. A third part contactor has caused serious damage to major telecommunications cables in one of BT’s deep level tunnels, which has resulted in a loss of service to customers in parts of East London.

Q. Do BT’s engineers currently have access to the tunnel to start fixing the damage?

A. Not at the moment. Our engineers cannot access the tunnel until the site has been declared safe for them to enter. Health and safety and structural engineers have assessed the damage and recommend structural support in the tower before work is undertaken. This structural work is expected to take a number of days

BT engineers are currently using alternative methods to restore service and have already successfully restored service to thousands of impacted customers.

Q. How many customers are affected?

A. This is still being assessed, but initial estimates are that tens of thousands customers are affected. Thousands have had their service restored and work is continuing around the clock to restore service to all customers. We will provide further detail as the situation develops.

Q. What services have been impacted?

A. A range of services are affected, including telephony, broadband, ISDN and private circuits. A number of mobile ‘cell sites’ are also affected.

Q. When do you expect all repairs will be complete?

A. This is still being assessed. Our engineers are working around the clock to restore services to customers as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the damage, which happened 32 meters below street level, it is not possible at this stage to provide an exact timeframe as to when services will to be restored but customers should be assured that everything that can be done is being done. We will provide further details as the situation develops.

Q. What should customers do if they have no telephone services and they are infirm or vulnerable?

A. Affected customers needing to make calls to the emergency services are advised to do so by using their mobile phone, or alternatively by using a friend or neighbour’s working phone.

Q. Can you provide a guarantee to any affected major business in the area that their services will be restored by Monday morning?

A. We recognise the critical importance of communications services to major businesses and are therefore working around the clock to restore service as quickly as possible. If necessary, we will prioritise the restoration of services to businesses and public sector organizations first.

Q. Has anyone been hurt?

A. There are currently no reports of any injuries at the site. The safety of the site is currently being assessed by a team of safety consultants and structural engineers. The London Fire Brigade is also on standby if required.

Q. Does the any structural damage to the tunnel pose any significant risk to people living in the surrounding area?

A. This is currently being assessed

Q. How many other communications providers are affected?

A. A number of other communications providers are affected. They are being kept informed of progress by BT

During Saturday afternoon, 4th April 2009, on the 2012 Olympics site, a large number of high capacity BT core network circuits/cables were damaged by a Third Party. These cables were in a tunnel 32m below ground surface.

Since Saturday afternoon, BT engineers have been on site working to restore service to customers affected by this incident.

Internet circuits have not been affected

EDIT: I stand corrected, looks like a lot of internet circuits are affected, was a lot of misinformation being fed out when I first heard about all this.