How can one plan an annual event and be sure the grid will be available?

[preceptor Amat]

An annual conference on San Jose SLIS Island was planned for  April 26 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. SLT.  The grid went down about 2 hours before the conf. and did not come back until about 1/2 into the planned start time. By then presenters and attendees had left in frustration. How can one be reasonably sure that work that goes into planning such an event is not a waste of time?  Are there "safe days" we can be informed of a year or at least 6 months in advance during which Linden Labs would not decide to update billing software or other such thing?  Months of work by a number of individuals  went into this conference and the only result was frustration with Second Life and another reason not to use it.

[Theresa Tennyson]

The problem on the 26th was caused by a networking hardware failure in a data center. It was basically unpredictable. This was the Second Life equivalent of a hurricane or earthquake. Unfortunately your conference found itself in the position of a RL conference scheduled for New Orleans toward the end of 2005.

In general the overall grid is pretty reliable lately. You're most likely to find disruptions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when individual regions are restarted to install updated software.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Don't use SL.  As I suggested you might like to try http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page so that you can take full responsibility.

No, there are no 'safe days' and I'm not aware of any software (or other company) that would make a six- or twelve-month guarantee like that.  Do you know of a conference centre that knows that a fire will definitely not break out on a certain date?

[Nyll Bergbahn]

You can check planned maintenance on the grid status page http://status.secondlifegrid.net/

You were unfortunate. There were issues yesterday that resulted in unscheduled maintenance.

 

[updated] Unscheduled Maintenance

Posted by Status Desk on April 26th, 2012 at 05:18 pm PDT

[updated 5:18pm PDT 26 April 2012] Some offline regions are returning to service, but we’re still working to restore other components. Please don’t rez valuable (no-copy) objects or transact L$ or land yet.

[updated 5:05pm PDT 26 April 2012] We’re aware some regions are unable to return from restart. We don’t have an ETA on service restoration.  We’ll keep you posted.

[updated 3:23pm PDT 26 April 2012] Services are still undergoing maintenance - logins, billing, and other issues may occur. Some regions may be down intermittently. Please continue to refrain from rezzing no-copy objects, or transacting L$ or land. At this time, we do not have an estimated time of repair. Please continue to monitor this blog for updates.

[updated 1:20pm PDT 26 April 2012] As maintenance continues please refrain from rezzing no copy objects, in-world transactions or land purchases etc.

[updated 11:30am PDT 26 April 2012] Due to the ongoing maintenance, Marketplace orders may also be delayed. We are continuing to work on resolving this issue, please keep an eye on the blog for further updates.

[Reopened 11:00am PDT 26 April 2012] Services are undergoing additional maintenance - logins, billing, and other issues may occur. At this time, we have no estimated time of repair. Please continue to monitor this blog for updates.

[COMPLETED 10:45am PDT 26 April 2012]  All maintenance has been completed.

[updated 9:10am PDT 26 April 2012] We are continuing to work to restore services. At this time, we have no estimated time of repair. Please continue to monitor this blog for updates.

[Posted 7:20am PDT 26 April 2012]  We are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance. This may cause some Residents to be logged out or prevent some from being able to login. Our homepage (www.secondlife.com) is also unavailable during this maintenance, so live chat service is unavailable. Please keep an eye on this blog for updates.

 

[Baloo Uriza]

Keep an eye on the Second Life Grid Status or, better yet, subscribe to the Grid Status RSS feed.  Plan a second date in case of rain-out.  On the grid status page, there's also a Google Calendar letting you know of planned events that may impact availability, doesn't hurt to add that calendar to your Outlook or Google Calendar.  Avoid those times.