Is Caspervend down?

[Anna Nova]

Seems it is.  Can't buy anything in-world that uses Caspervend.

isitdownrightnow.com says:

We have tried pinging Caspervend website using our server and the website returned the above results. If caspervend.casperdns.com is down for us too there is nothing you can do except waiting. Probably the server is overloaded, down or unreachable because of a network problem, outage or a website maintenance is in progress...

 

[manoji Yachvili]

I guess so, because I've bought right now something that didn't arrived and I've try the redelivery with Casper bust doesn't work

[Garnet Psaltery]

CasperSafe is also down.

[Nick0678]

All of CasperTech is down, probably server issues.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

I pinged the domain and it's not responding.   and is down, so guessing so.

[Axel Naxos]

😓

[bigmoe Whitfield]

But remember do not get to mad at casper or caspers team of people,  down times happen,  it's why no one in their right minds gives a 100% up time on anything and if they do, avoid them at all costs.  So it happens,  just wait for it to return and do not give them a hard time.

[Qie Niangao]

The Lab should take note how much of the SL economy depends on this single third party. It's been several hours now; what if it doesn't come back for a full day? Won't that cause noticeably fewer purchases, hence a blip of decreased L$ demand and associated revenue from LindeX fees?

Now, what if they never came back? There's absolutely no reason to think that's the current situation -- DON'T PANIC !! -- but in some possible future world it could happen. What's the impact to LL's bottom line if that should ever happen?

I've long and often argued that all purchases of SL goods should be the same, whether from in-world vendors or on Marketplace, using the very same payment processing, product delivery, customer reviews, redelivery, merchant analytics, advertising, discounting, etc. This might supplant third party vendor systems such as Casper, although not necessarily, given a sufficiently complete API. It however would introduce a single point of failure for all SL commerce, but at least that point would be under Lab control.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

37 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

The Lab should take note how much of the SL economy depends on this single third party. It's been several hours now; what if it doesn't come back for a full day? Won't that cause noticeably fewer purchases, hence a blip of decreased L$ demand and associated revenue from LindeX fees?

Now, what if they never came back? There's absolutely no reason to think that's the current situation -- DON'T PANIC !! -- but in some possible future world it could happen. What's the impact to LL's bottom line if that should ever happen?

I've long and often argued that all purchases of SL goods should be the same, whether from in-world vendors or on Marketplace, using the very same payment processing, product delivery, customer reviews, redelivery, merchant analytics, advertising, discounting, etc. This might supplant third party vendor systems such as Casper, although not necessarily, given a sufficiently complete API. It however would introduce a single point of failure for all SL commerce, but at least that point would be under Lab control.

Hippo vend did this to so many of us.    it got bought out from andy,   the guy whom bought it,  lost EVERYTHING because he had no backups and rackspace didnt have anything for him, which I find odd, but rackspace has been known to lose data...   but still.  I'd rather too we not lose another system that very veyr well works and that I use myself since day one.   I'm not endorsing or sponsored by casper,   he makes great products and LL should think about working with him to make mp and this system oneish?  

[Juequinaisheley Ichibara]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

Now, what if they never came back? There's absolutely no reason to think that's the current situation

If we all bought Casper's system's, there is no reason for him to stay. If i'm correct ? 

[Resi Pfeffer]

At least we know now, caspers public relations office works even worse than their servers.

[Garnet Psaltery]

There have been four notices from Casper Warden in the CasperTech User Support Group so far today.  The notice times might refer to my timezone, I can't remember how it works, but that's how they appear to me in the UK.

 

1) System Outage at 13:18:03

We have found the cause of the system outage today and service will be restored shortly.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

 

2) What should I do during an outage? at 13:43:12

In order to minimise disruption during an outage, it's really important that you follow these steps:

- DO NOT RESET ANYTHING.
- DO NOT RE-REZ ANYTHING.
- DO NOT DELETE ANYTHING.

Our system has off-grid backup servers which will catch and store AND RECOVER transactions even during a global outage like this - if you reset, re-rez, or delete your vendors or rental units, they will no longer be able to accept any transactions.

We'll be back shortly and start the process of

 

3) Outage - Further Info at 14:29:31

Please rest assured that we are doing everything we can to get services back online.

We are currently waiting on intervention from datacentre technicians to repair some faulty hardware. 

Our ETA is one hour.

 

4) Outage - Update at 15:44:34

We are still waiting on an update from the datacentre.

Please rest assured - we are aware of the issue, we are NOT shutting down, and we have NOT been hacked or compromised.

PLEASE DO NOT IM ME.

 

Edited November 8, 2020 by Garnet Psaltery

[Scylla Rhiadra]

I wonder if restoring the system will enable it to complete transactions made while it was down: with the weekend sales happening, events, and the usual shopping in-world, there have to be a LOT of those, and so far as I saw last night, the only place where the outage was being noted was in a few of the group chats. Many many people don't know enough, still, not to purchase things.

If the system cannot capture attempted purchases made during the outage, there are going to be a lot of merchants very very very busy over the next week fielding complaints, requests for refunds, requests for delivery of goods paid for (this will include me -- the system went down as I was in the middle of shopping, and gobbled up L$120 of mine -- not enough to really care about, but still . . .)

Meanwhile, this is going to impact on everything from purchases of L$ and the income of merchants, to in-world concurrency.

A foretaste of the coming End of Days, in other words!

[Garnet Psaltery]

7 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I wonder if restoring the system will enable it to complete transactions made while it was down

I'm taking Casper at his word as related in my previous comment.

Edited November 8, 2020 by Garnet Psaltery

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

I'm taking Casper at his word as repeated in my previous comment.

/me makes a cup of tea, and sits on a floor cushion to stare patiently and expectantly at her inventory.

[Gabriele Graves]

Wow, it's almost like the universe decided to prove my point over my recent comments about the reliability of redelivery.  In short time too.  *sips coffee*

Edited November 8, 2020 by Gabriele Graves

[Marianne Little]

I don't know what vendors that's using Casparvend or not, so I don't shop. I read about this 8 hours ago and if this was another Sunday, I would hit the weekend sales.

[Resi Pfeffer]

1 hour ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

There have been four notices from Casper Warden in the CasperTech User Support Group so far today.

It would be more helpful, if the word would be spread to all people being affected, not just to a few selected ones.
When i tried to get a redelivery 11 hours ago, i just got to see a timed out connection. And that didnt change until now. 
Its not rocket science to set up a status site for anyone to read stranding there. In case the whole domain/hardware/rack/datacenter is broken, then just redirect it to a backup where some infos are displayed.

[bigmoe Whitfield]

3 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

It would be more helpful, if the word would be spread to all people being affected, not just to a few selected ones.
When i tried to get a redelivery 11 hours ago, i just got to see a timed out connection. And that didnt change until now. 
Its not rocket science to set up a status site for anyone to read stranding there. In case the whole domain/hardware/rack/datacenter is broken, then just redirect it to a backup where some infos are displayed.

It's not cheap to do,  there are free solutions, but,  monitoing on the level casper needs is going to cost, that means it's got to come from some place.   https://status.io/pricing 

So let's take the fall over aspect,   but if the Link is down, such as level3 or century link and that's whom the back haul,  last mile fiber, data center is sitting on (rare, but it happens) and those go down.  there will be zero notice going out to any site.

[Garnet Psaltery]

3 minutes ago, Resi Pfeffer said:

It would be more helpful, if the word would be spread to all people being affected, not just to a few selected ones.
When i tried to get a redelivery 11 hours ago, i just got to see a timed out connection. And that didnt change until now. 
Its not rocket science to set up a status site for anyone to read stranding there. In case the whole domain/hardware/rack/datacenter is broken, then just redirect it to a backup where some infos are displayed.

Well, there are currently 15,390 group members, and I know people were spreading the news to other groups, but I see what you're saying.  I have no idea how easy it would be to set up such a system, or the cost.  If you'd like Casper to consider your idea you could perhaps message him, although not just this minute, obviously.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Garnet Psaltery said:

Well, there are currently 15,390 group members, and I know people were spreading the news to other groups, but I see what you're saying.  I have no idea how easy it would be to set up such a system, or the cost.  If you'd like Casper to consider your idea you could perhaps message him, although not just this minute, obviously.

The vast majority of SL residents just aren't going to know this is a thing until they try to purchase something. Most people don't carefully monitor group chats unless they have a reason to, and they certainly aren't checking the CasperVend website. In fact, I'd venture a guess that most residents have no idea what CasperVend even is, or that it's not a LL operation.

So there are, with each passing minute, more and more aggrieved and even panicky residents out there. I'm down L$120 . . . not something I'm losing sleep over. Can you imagine, though, wandering in-world, and trying to make a major purchase, oblivious to what is going down at the moment?

When the vendor I was using last night refused to cough up my purchase, I actually hung around for an hour and a half or so. Initially, this was on the off chance that it would come through, but once I learned -- after about a half hour -- that the whole system was down, I just stuck around to warn people who were coming in to buy weekend sale items. Most of them ignored me, tried to make a purchase anyway, and then replied to me in irritation, as though it were somehow MY fault . . .

[Garnet Psaltery]

This is why I said

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

The vast majority of SL residents just aren't going to know this is a thing until they try to purchase something. Most people don't carefully monitor group chats unless they have a reason to, and they certainly aren't checking the CasperVend website. In fact, I'd venture a guess that most residents have no idea what CasperVend even is, or that it's not a LL operation.

 

I realise that; I was simply pointing out what I saw happen, which wasn't complete neglect of customers.  I do appreciate that there's a big problem, however, and it will be interesting to see what comes of this event.

[LittleMe Jewell]

A few stores have blocked access to their region and have blasted out multiple group notices saying that they will reopen when Caspervend is back up.

That is probably the safest course of action, as far as people getting pissed about lost money anyway.  Even if the stores put up big signs, too many people wouldn't bother reading them. Heck, I seldom let everything around me rez before I find what I want and try to buy it.

[Rowan Amore]

As I just posted in another sub forum where people are raging.....

4 minutes ago, RowanMinx said:

Most of my groups have sent out a message regarding vendors being down.  Some have shut down their stores until it's resolved.  I'm sorry but buying some virtual goods is not a top priority for me at the moment.  The stores, will of course, lose money today but my being able to buy a new pair of shoes will not impact my overall well-being.  Priorities people ffs.

 

[Jules Catlyn]

This probably will not be seen by many but i am a mod for Caspertech. There is a group that is open to join where notices are sent to keep people updated. We are currently sending out this message:

There's a network outage at the data centre, we're waiting on a tech to fix - please see group notices

Please see https://www.facebook.com/CasperTechUK/posts/1485645984963689

and / (or have an alt) or join  the no-chat open join Announcements group secondlife:///app/group/4eef3ca3-943e-642e-0935-d651aa1b91b6/about

Apologies for the inconvenience