Extended Gmail outage hits Google Apps admins
A prolonged, ongoing Gmail outage has some Google Apps administrators pulling their hair out as their end users, including high-ranking executives, complain loudly while they wait for service to be restored.
At around 5 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Google announced in the official Google Apps discussion forum that the company was aware of a problem preventing Gmail users from logging into their accounts and that it expected a solution by 9 p.m. on Thursday.
Google offered no explanation as to what is causing the problem nor as to why it will take the company so long to solve the problem, which manifests itself by giving Gmail users a "502" error when trying to access their e-mail accounts.
Although Google said the bug is affecting "a small number of users," that is little comfort for Google Apps administrators who are fielding angry complaints from end users.
An administrator identified as Bill W. posted a desperate message on the forum Thursday morning, saying his company's CEO is steaming about being locked out of his e-mail account since around 4 p.m. on Wednesday.
"Support keeps telling me it is affecting a small number of users. This is not a temporary problem if it
lasts this long. It is frustrating to not be able to expedite these issues. I have to speak with the boss again and he's po'd (pissed off). This is considered a mission critical issue here. We may have to make other arrangements. Apparently Google mail is not very reliable. I think I would have pushed for something else before we switched if I had known the level of unreliability," he wrote.
Another administrator identified as Techlinks wrote: "This outage has hit us pretty hard and we've been out of email for 24 hours and now business is suffering."
Google Apps is a suite of hosted collaboration and communication software and services designed for workplace use. Its Premier edition costs US$50 per user per year and includes a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for the Gmail service.
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SaaS and High Availability
This is just an example of things that can go wrong. Google Apps are great - but wait till you have Internet related slowdowns and outages. Every business that uses SaaS should have high availability engineered into their net design - the purpose built appliance from Aspen Networks is a must have - it increases reliability and speeds up your SaaS connections - take a look at www.aspen-networks.comWas really brief
I had it. Lasted for only about 30 minutes, then back up. A bit annoying, though not like the old days of Hotmail outages. Not bad considering I'm paying nothing.