posted on October 19, 2000 09:31:40 PM new
It finally dawned on me! As to all these A/W & E-Bay changes/outages: If everything ran smoothly and perpetuated without change, imagine all the programmers & network personnel these two companies would be able to send back to their pizza delivery jobs...
Oops...what was that horrific noise? Sounded like all my auctions being cancelled at once...
Seriously, though. E-Bay isn't the busiest site in the world. I don't see the Microsoft, Yahoo or Sony websites crashing everytime someone sneezes. I think it's time for E-Bay to give up the "duct tape & baling wire" approach and cash out. Sell to Bill Gates or someone who can get it right.
posted on October 19, 2000 09:41:40 PM new
I would agree, but, my point is, for the amount of traffic on E-Bay (which is less than the previous sites mentioned) there seems to be an inordinate amount of "down-time".
My ATM does crash frequently and my bank tells me the same story: We don't service them, but rely on an outside company...sorry! I'm looking for a new bank.
Regards,
schoonerdude (only here...don't hassle the poor "dude" on E-bay).
posted on October 19, 2000 09:44:21 PM new
Not an ebay cheerleader BUT I can't even go to a restaraunt these days and order a meal and have them get it right.
This is because all the waiters got jobs as bartenders, because all the good bartenders are now tech support for eBay. This is the price we pay for low unemployment.
posted on October 19, 2000 10:08:48 PM new
It is true that people tends to focus on the negative.Look at the news bad news makes news.Good news does not.
I have posted some fairly positive posts about ebaY only to get laughed at and wonder if I have been brain washed.
For the most part I think they are great and the site works well.
But its like your car,you have been driving for years and never breaks down.Then one day it won't start and you think this is the biggest piece of garbage I ever owned.
posted on October 19, 2000 10:37:10 PM newI don't see the Microsoft, Yahoo or Sony websites crashing everytime someone sneezes.
Not to justify the eBay outages, but the sites that you mentioned, for the most part, are not even remotely as complicated as eBay.
As far as AW's problems, these are almost exclusively eBay's fault. I am an member of the mailing list for eBay software developers, and I can tell you that eBay does not give prior notification when making changes. Perhaps AW could be quicker to respond to these changes, but it is not at all unusual for eBay to make a sudden change to the required specs that make all listings programs obsolete, with no notice.
posted on October 19, 2000 10:48:31 PM new
It's been so long since I walked into my bank and their system is down that I can't remember when it happened.
In the past 3 years that I have used the ATM, it has only been down 1 time.
posted on October 19, 2000 10:59:56 PM new
Oh for heaven's sake - if you had any idea how extremely impressive it is that Ebay manages the incredibly quick response time for that huge database over the internet yet....
I've built several databases and I can't believe how well Ebay manages. They must be constantly on their toes to keep something going so well that has so much activity on it and keeps mushrooming in size - not to mention adding new functionality on a constant basis.
Think of trying to keep the traffic running smoothly in some city that is doubling in size every 6 months. Why would anyone be angry at the city planners because there are traffic jams and accidents from time to time instead of every day at rush hour?
And personally, I don't think Yahoo or Microsoft and certainly not Sony come close in activy or size.
[ edited by KateArtist on Oct 19, 2000 11:00 PM ]
posted on October 19, 2000 11:19:10 PM new
Yahoo & Amazon most certainly do get more hits than E-Bay (see: http://www.mediametrix.com/data/thetop.jsp?language=us). E-Bay ranks 16th. There are more to these sites than auctions. In my initial post I referred to Microsoft, Yahoo and Sony's respective websites. I wasn't referring to "auction" sites, but other websites that have more daily traffic than E-bay. Yes, E-bay may be more "complicated", but that still isn't any excuse for their repeated outages. Sell E-Bay to Microsoft, Sony or some other company who has experience and I'll bet the outages will diminish.
posted on October 19, 2000 11:25:05 PM new
"Think of trying to keep the traffic running smoothly in some city that is doubling in size every 6 months. Why would anyone be angry at the city planners because there are traffic jams and accidents from time to time instead of every day at rush hour?"
My city certainly isn't doubling in size every six months--and it's a good thing--because there are always traffic jams and too many accidents at rush hour.
The reason: There is ALWAYS constructions going on because the city fathers are trying to "improve" the infrastructure.
Hmmmm...sort of sounds familiar..eBayish in fact.
cybercat
--
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
posted on October 19, 2000 11:58:39 PM new
I'm very understanding, but their downtime result in financial losses to it's paying customers (the sellers). As they stated in their announcement extending auctions would complicate matters, but something must be offered to compensate sellers taking these losses from the absence of last minute bidders. The auctions closing during these outages should be null and void unless the seller accepts the closing bid.
I've had items jump a couple hundred in the last minute of an auction, that isn't a rare event. We're talking losses, not just inconvenience.
posted on October 20, 2000 02:56:03 AM new
In *real* life, I'm a systems analyst for a major insurance company. I work every day with big computers and big databases. Ebay has a huge database with lots of activity but it's not a particularly 'difficult' database. Their core job is to 'keep track of auctions'. Yes, they have *lots* of auctions to keep track of but each individual auction is relatively simple.
In terms of database access, eBay is a disgrace. My company has one of the largest databases in the world - larger than eBay's. If we had 1/10 the problems eBay has, heads would roll.
Their computer problems could be pretty much solved if
1) they had more 'scheduled' down time to do maintenance. Heck, let them shut down *every* night for a few hours. Don't allow auctions to end during that time (so you don't have to worry about switching to a hot backup during that time). I personally wouldn't mind them being down for four hours every night (like they presently do on friday's) as long as they're consistent. It's the unexpected outages that are upsetting the sellers.
2) make site stability truly their number one priority instead of having management constantly throw new projects at their programming teams. Trust me, upper *management* typically has no idea how the 'nuts-and-bolts' of data management typically works - they know a lot of buzz words and are good at coming up with fanciful ideas of how to 'improve' things, but that's about it.
I could go on and on but it's much too early and I need to go make some coffee.
posted on October 20, 2000 08:41:24 AM new
Oh LOL - No - no insurance company database would have the kind of constant intense use that Ebay has. (and I have worked on the largest claim processing system there is). My husband works for a major telephone company. We are both pretty amazed at the quality Ebay shows - Ebay must make access a major priority. I've never seen slow response into their systems.
The biggest problem with a database like Ebay's is not the complexity, but the indexing and searches they allow and the constant ballooning of the database size.
Trying to plan for growth and cope with it is the biggest headache there is for database engineers.
And the point is - they can't just 'shut' down for the night. This is a global access database, when it is night for you, it is broad daylight for someone else. Personally I'd far rather have some downtime now and then not have 24/7 access most of the time.
Perhaps your management doesn't know about databases, but that's not true of all companies. From what I see, Ebay is extremely well managed. Very little about their system is less than well designed. I don't see Microsoft managing nearly so well.
For instance, Alta Vista now reloads the search page every few minutes. If you've ever tried to type in a URL, it will get you 5 out of 10 times and reload the page while you are typing. - A bad design decision and one that is as of yet uncorrected, although it's been like that quite a while.
posted on October 20, 2000 09:32:41 AM new
[b]And the point is - they can't just 'shut' down for the night. This is a global access database, when it is night for you, it is broad daylight for someone else. Personally I'd far rather have some downtime now and then not have 24/7 access most of the time.
[/b]
We'll just have to agree to disagree. I'd much rather have scheduled downtime that I can plan around rather than these unscheduled outages that always seem to occur at peak times. The uncertainty drives me crazy.
I've never seen slow response into their systems
I wish I could say the same.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying eBay's computer systems aren't very big and don't handle lots of transactions. But - in the core area of 'handling auctions' - each transaction is relatively simple compared to
some transactions I've seen run through some big batch trails running through big mainframes.
All I'm saying is that running auctions doesn't require a lot of finesse or computations - it requires brute strength (more servers, bigger processors, etc.) The fact that they just went to having a 'hot' backup last year (I think) is incredible. That's about the first line of defense if you have a system that needs 24/7 access. And their 'hot' backup is a joke. You (the user) should never even know a 'hot' backup is there. Basically it's a parallel system - if the primary goes down, you can switch (almost instantly) to the backup which *should* pick up the load without missing a beat. Then you fix the primary system, bring it up to date, and switch back. (Yes, I'm simplifying a bit but we're not talking rocket science here. This is pretty basic computer management.)
Yes, sometimes *both* will go down (but it's actually pretty rare). Ebay would not have the problems it's having if it would spend the money on the additional hardware they so obviously need and the people to run them.
posted on October 20, 2000 11:32:03 AM newKateArtistTrying to plan for growth and cope with it is the biggest headache there is for database engineers. And the point is - they can't just 'shut' down for the night. This is a global access database, when it is night for you, it is broad daylight for someone else. Personally I'd far rather have some downtime now and then not have 24/7 access most of the time.
Kate,
You seem to be very understanding of eBay's problems, but you are ignoring the losses the sellers are taking when they have the service interruptions.
Many sellers in order to get the maximum price start their auctions low and with no reserve. When they system coughs at closing time they've lost those bids that come in at the last minutes. In many instances the last minute bids are very significant. Mechanisms needs to be in place for sellers that are running real auctions. The losses eBay expects them to accept are unrealistic. A product that causes the customer to lose money through failure needs to accept the responsibility. All I'm asking for is for auctions that end during outages to be declared null and void where the seller can relist or accept the high bid if they are satisfied. Could you imagine a real auction where suddenly a power outage caused the high bidder to win by default?
posted on October 20, 2000 12:14:09 PM new
Count me along the "I, too, wonder why eBay can't be more stable" folks. I understood their early growing pains, before it was clear what a phenomenon they were going to be, and before they had any cash. But neither of those reasons is valid today.
And as far as other examples given above:
- Yes, getting your credit card purchase approved is slow for a week in December..but that is known in advance, along with the long lines, shortage of parking spaces, etc. I don't want companies spending billions and billions of dollars to expand their capacity just so I can get home ten minutes early one week a year.
- I travel a lot, and I've never had the airline reservation system down. And that certainly is as complex and busy as ebay.
- my ATM network is rarely down, other than clearly-posted, regular maintenance.
There ARE companies out there, like IBM, who know how to set up and maintain the kind of facilities the eBay needs. If they've chosen an inferior systems integrator, the fault lies with them.
As far as analogies to traffic within cities..well..it kinda breaks down, since adding new highways is darn near impossible, and other solutions are also hard to implement (growth controls? zoning? not too effective in most areas) whereas a simple check for a few million will throw a whole bunch of servers at ebay's capacity problem. (For those of you on the east coast, by the way, note the "big dig" in boston...10 years and untold billions to rebuild the road infrastructure, just through downtown...).
posted on October 20, 2000 12:17:44 PM new
There are two types of computer systems: those that have crashed and those that will.
Having been on the inside of the technology field, I do think that eBay has been rather sloppy in their handling of their resources.
You can only apologize so many times. Some of these outages are part of the process--no one realistically expects perfection when you are growing fast or making upgrades. Some occur from problems outside of eBay's control. At some point, however, you need to own up to the fact that you can't dump the liability on someone else's lap.
It doesn't matter if an outage is one minute or one day. If the outage occurs when your auction closes that auction should be extended or not charged for. eBay needs to have the ethical backbone to take responsibility. If they were to do so, there would be the sufficient financial incentive to increase their uptime to acceptable levels. Yes, it would not come cheap, but it would pay off in the long run.
If the buck doesn't stop with eBay's commitment, the bucks will go elsewhere. Count on it.
posted on October 20, 2000 12:43:14 PM new
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
Nearly all of the outages over the last year were a direct result of new changes that were implemented before they were properly tested. The week they added the "watch" feature, it crash the "My Ebay" functions almost every day.
October 12 they announced:
*** BID HISTORY and BIDDER SEARCH ENHANCEMENTS ***
October 15: System Down
October 17: System Down
October 18: System Down (seller search only)
October 19: System Down (seller search only)
Could this have been avoided ? Absolutely. Test, test, test, and test again. Then launch the new feature when you know it works.
The next system problems should occur shortly after the 2 category listings go live. This should really screw up the database, and of course when the site takes a dump you lose 2 listing fees instead of one. Ain't life grand.
posted on October 20, 2000 02:10:33 PM new
uaru that's policy problem, not a database accessability issue and I do agree with you that auctions should always be extended if they end during down time.
I don't think Ebay always makes the right decisions, but I am impressed with how they run their system.
Barbarake, I don't agree that running auctions with this type of system use is anything like running a batch system. Batch jobs can be scheduled in advance and ususally one has an idea of how much system one needs to run them.
Online systems (and it's hard to compare Unix systems with IBM mainframes) are a whole different animal, with instant database update, so you have a massive amounts of I/O contention on those files. Online systems are always huge hogs compared to batch.
It's the management of those files that takes intense work. How to keep the access to every part of those files from getting 'traffic jammed' with requests - so you have to keep the structure very well balanced which takes constant monitoring and maintenence.
I see that Ebay now has duplicate databases all over the world - so they are a lot further than just one "hot" back up. Just the same - no matter how many duplicate database one has, one corruption that isn't caught in time to keep it from infecting all your duplicates and it doesn't matter how many 'hot' backups one has. Then it's a matter of trying to find and fix the corruptions without causing problems with the current data.
Oh and by the way IBM doesn't know how to set up systems that are 'completely' stable - believe me. LOL - that was pretty funny.
They are, however great at telling you to completely re-write your system, they've stopped supporting whatever version of system/online environment software you are using and you must upgrade to the new version that is completely different.
posted on October 20, 2000 05:52:59 PM new
Kateartist:
Uh...kindly show me any reference that ties a claim to IBM being "completely stable". Methinks you've read more into this thread than anyone wrote. Perhaps you rush to make fun of that which does not exist? Now *that's* funny!
I'm not going to get into "IBM supporting" or "IBM bashing here", since that is just a distraction. The point is, there ARE companies who have managed to run things a lot better than ebay has, and no amount of discussion can rebut that. Compare ebay to the airline reservation system, for example. Oh, that's right, you can't compare them..the airline system is sooo much better!
posted on October 23, 2000 09:21:07 AM new
Based on financial results, a lot of people are paying Sun a lot of money for their machines. I know ebay uses them for servers. Wonder where the rest of their hardware/software comes from.
posted on October 23, 2000 10:31:13 AM new
Over the weekend I participated in a cattle drive. We pushed 650 head 16 miles--it took us 8 hours and it was snowing.
When I compare this with e-bay going down for a few hours and not being able to instantly buy an item from a seller across the country--PayPal my money and have the item here overnight if I wish--well, just consider the alternative.
posted on October 23, 2000 10:43:47 AM new
THIS TOPIC is as complicated as Politics Sex or Religion.
No two people will EVER agree.
All are doomed to walk away frustrated in the other persons position.
posted on October 23, 2000 11:35:26 AM new
[b]KateArtist[\b]
[b]Barbarake, I don't agree that running auctions with this type of system use is anything like running a batch system. Batch jobs can be scheduled in advance and ususally one has an idea of how much system one needs to run them. [\b]
If you re-read my note, I was comparing the 'difficulty' of eBay's average transaction (IMHO, relatively simple) compared to a lot of transactions I've seen running through some batch systems. In other words, I was comparing 'transactions', not 'systems'. Of course the 'systems' are not directly comparable - everyone knows that.
I still say that many (most?) of eBay's access problems could be solved by brute force, i.e. more servers, more processors, more memory, etc. They should have learned by now - if they think they'll have 'X' usage in three or six months, plan for 2X or 4X (or 10X !!!) Servers are *not* that expensive.
(Ok, to a person they're expensive but not to a company the size and valuation of eBay whose whole business rides on their computer systems.)
And most of eBay's remaining problems would be solved by concentrating on site stability instead of constantly rolling out 'new features' (none of which have seemed particularly useful, IMHO).
posted on October 23, 2000 11:52:49 AM newAnd most of eBay's remaining problems would be solved by concentrating on site stability instead of constantly rolling out 'new features' (none of which have seemed particularly useful, IMHO).
This is the key to the whole eBay site stability mess. Never "enhance" any system with new features until the existing infrastructure is sound.
There is simply no excuse for eBay's site going down on an almost routine basis. True, eBay's software is complicated. But there are countless other companies with software that is much more complicated and MUCH more active than eBay's, most of which are NEVER down except for scheduled routine maintenance. eBay has the money to hire the very best engineers and purchase the very best hardware. Obviously, keeping Wall Street happy is their only concern and it will surely bite them in the @ss at some point.
posted on October 23, 2000 02:53:24 PM new
Captain.
These things you talk about..they seem like mere dreams ..
Ebay has yet to deliver a consistent smooth running site.
It is forever fraught with problems
(If you ask the sellers)
There have been literally thousands of problems yet few are acknowledged on the announcement board.
Perhaps 50%...is my guess.
In my opinion the worst thing about Ebay is they rarely admit their flaws.
posted on October 23, 2000 05:01:28 PM new
zeezna:
You are right..for ebay these things *are* a dream. However, for other companies, they are reality. It is possible to have a decent computer system...if well designed and tested.
I've been with ebay for a number of years now, and they've had problems for as long as I've been there. Its the continuing series of problems that concerns us vis-a-vis their management.
posted on October 23, 2000 08:13:42 PM new
What frustrates me is that Ebay was down last week off and on over 4 nights and the week before for several nights.
It has taken this long for them to give an explanation. That whole time we were lead to believe this was only minor problems when in fact they knew the extent and for how long it would impact. And now they will be down for another 7 - 10 days?
Rather than say we are shutting down for an extended time until we can function at 100 % capacity
or
Listing fees are reduced xx amount
or if we go down we will take the extra 30 minutes and extend all auctions,
The fact that they accept no responsibility in extending auctions or compensating bidders is inexcusable.
What would happen at a live auction where the speaker system quit working? Would the bidders stay if they couldn't hear? Would people keep using their services if their equipment resulted in people leaving the auction because they could not hear??
Would people stay in a movie theatre if the sound was turned off, or would they leave and demand their money back?
I can understand technical problems, I worked on temperature instrumentation for the space program and jet aircraft for 10 years, but not announcing the real problem and then not extending auctions is the height of frustration!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
