Dropbox down? ...And now up! | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox down? ...And now up!

dropbox.com

15 pointsparan10 comments

According to their Twitter, they're doing a DB Upgrade:

<DropboxOps> We're currently upgrading our database server. We'll require about 30-45 minutes of maintenance until everything's back up.

Confirmed on the forums and status site.

http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=35092

http://status.dropbox.com/

I'm a relatively new user (past few months) but do they usually send out any notice on downtime?

Do they use their own DB or is it based on Amazon RDS? It would be interesting to know where the downtime is coming from.

I'm debating whether it would be a good idea to have the dropbox client be aware of planned downtime and inform the user accordingly.

I think it would be good to fire an event for planned downtime, without incurring too much of an overhead.

Inform the user why? What are they going to do differently as a result? I use Dropbox precisely so I don't have to concern myself with server downtime, database upgrades, etc. and I'm guessing most other users are the same way. Just sync it when the service is back up, I'm okay with not knowing.

This morning, my dad made a few changes to his files in dropbox at home, as usual, turned off the system and went to office. After a couple of hours, he calls me and asks me why his files weren't synced as they were everyday. Our initial thought was that he turned the home computer off before dropbox could sync, but as you might have guessed, it is because dropbox was down.

Not sure about everyone, but my dad could've definitely used some warning that dropbox would be down.

I'd say only notify the user if they try to push changes during planned downtime (maybe it does so already - I haven't noticed). That, or something unobtrusive, like an icon change 1hr - 30mins ahead of time. I think an actual notice would be overkill, though.

Works now. That was quick.

the power of Kevin Rose?

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