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Slack is offline

status.slack.com

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Re: Slack is offline

#121

Post by Veratyr »

artur_makly wrote: post #81
Arathorn wrote: post #75

This is probably preaching to the choir, but hosting your own FOSS chat is nowadays a very viable way to avoid being dependent on a centralised service like Slack. Your options include: * Riot.im / Matrix.org (decentralised global network; e2e encryption; open protocol) * Rocket.Chat (Meteor-based; focus on UX and feature) * MatterMost.com (clone of Slack UI; open core license) * Zulip.org (all about threads!) * ...o…

love MatterMost as it is ITAR compliant

"International Traffic in Arms Regulations"?

How is that relevant to a chat app?

Re: Slack is offline

#122

Post by hbvvvbgvv »

artur_makly wrote: post #81
Arathorn wrote: post #75

This is probably preaching to the choir, but hosting your own FOSS chat is nowadays a very viable way to avoid being dependent on a centralised service like Slack. Your options include: * Riot.im / Matrix.org (decentralised global network; e2e encryption; open protocol) * Rocket.Chat (Meteor-based; focus on UX and feature) * MatterMost.com (clone of Slack UI; open core license) * Zulip.org (all about threads!) * ...o…

love MatterMost as it is ITAR compliant

does that mean no Indians are allowed on it?

Re: Slack is offline

#123

Post by hbvvvbgvv »

pkrumins wrote: post #96

I've switched to using TwistApp ( https://www.twistapp.com ) with my team. Unlike Slack where you have channels where everyone talks about everything, TwistApp bases conversations around threads. Every problem that's being worked on has its own thread. Once it's completed, I close and archive the threads. Very effective for getting things done as every task is isolated in a separate thread and discussions don't overl…

They discovered email. Good for them.

Re: Slack is offline

#124

Post by losingthefight »

NightMKoder wrote: post #64

I'm hoping they publish a public post-mortem. Learning from this kind of outage is the best kind experience for engineering - though it's far better when only staging goes down and not prod.

Looks like they won't: https://twitter.com/SlackHQ/status/925586114152411137

We've no solid plans right now as we're focused on tidying things up internally, but will consider it. Thanks again for holding tight

Re: Slack is offline

#125

Post by hedora »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #107
flukus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such as? If you've got less than 1000 users then you need an extremely basic server, a raspberry pi should more than suffice. Then you've just got a little bit of manual (or automated) administration, software updates and backups mostly. I really didn't expect my post to be so controversial, is the HN crowd really so terrified about running there own hardware?

I'm guessing that you're being downvoted because there's a lot more to consider. I agree that it doesn't take much hardware these days (most single-board computers would work perfectly well) to service https://www.slack.com/plans ) would likely take considerable engineering effort. Sure, you could set it up, toss it in a closet, and it might have 100% uptime for a year...until it doesn't. If chat is business-critical…

For $6670 a month (price for 1000 users), I’m pretty sure most people here can spin up two VMs in two different colos, and setup IRC servers or whatever.

99.99% uptime means it can be down for a few minutes a month, so all it needs to do is fail over properly. In practice, it will probably have many more than 4 9’s.

I think the real reason slack does well is ease of client + service setup, the brain-dead UI, lots of feature creep that a few people care about, mobile clients, etc, etc.

I’m not a huge fan, but it could be worse. At least they didn’t leak everyone’s password like hipchat did.

Re: Slack is offline

#126

Post by flukus »

hedora wrote: post #125
seanp2k2 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that you're being downvoted because there's a lot more to consider. I agree that it doesn't take much hardware these days (most single-board computers would work perfectly well) to service https://www.slack.com/plans ) would likely take considerable engineering effort. Sure, you could set it up, toss it in a closet, and it might have 100% uptime for a year...until it doesn't. If chat is business-critical…

For $6670 a month (price for 1000 users), I’m pretty sure most people here can spin up two VMs in two different colos, and setup IRC servers or whatever. 99.99% uptime means it can be down for a few minutes a month, so all it needs to do is fail over properly. In practice, it will probably have many more than 4 9’s. I think the real reason slack does well is ease of client + service setup, the brain-dead UI, lots of…

$80,0000 a year, for that sort of money you could hire an IRC developer full time and get them to spend a day or two managing the company server.

Re: Slack is offline

#127

Post by nojvek »

saas_co_de wrote: post #101
acchow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there reason to believe self hosting will have better uptime?

yes. small scale is almost always simpler and less error prone than massive scale. slack also has pretty dubious quality standards. e.g. their desktop app and their atrocious replacement for screenhero.

The biggest benefit of slack for me is their search. All messages are indexed ready to be searched. Code snippets, images, giphy, attachments, bots. It’s a whole ecosystem, not easily replicable with irc.

Re: Slack is offline

#128

Post by user15672 »

scaryclam wrote: post #103
acchow wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there reason to believe self hosting will have better uptime?

Generally yes, given the reasons others have said. Other than that, at the very least, outages can be dealt with more proactively when you have your own setup. Third parties won't have the same priorities that your company does.

Don't see why you were voted down on this, since it's true. Slack working to get things running again doesn't mean they're prioritising your companies particular instance or region. They're likely to be making sure their own region and their own stuff is up and fixed first, so anyone away from the east coast of America is likely to get seen to after that. It would be stupid to do it any other way, since slack employees are likely affected as well and they're the ones trying to fix it. Down voting someone pointing that out is pretty fanboi-esk or really naieve.

Pretty much, if you don't own the service, you don't get to decide where in the queue you are for a fix.

Re: Slack is offline

#129

Post by arturmakly »

Veratyr wrote: post #121
artur_makly wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

love MatterMost as it is ITAR compliant

"International Traffic in Arms Regulations"? How is that relevant to a chat app?

if u work on military or DOD projects,u cant use most cloud platforms like slack. MM solves that compliance requirement

Re: Slack is offline

#130

Post by acchow »

flukus wrote: post #126
hedora wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For $6670 a month (price for 1000 users), I’m pretty sure most people here can spin up two VMs in two different colos, and setup IRC servers or whatever. 99.99% uptime means it can be down for a few minutes a month, so all it needs to do is fail over properly. In practice, it will probably have many more than 4 9’s. I think the real reason slack does well is ease of client + service setup, the brain-dead UI, lots of…

$80,0000 a year, for that sort of money you could hire an IRC developer full time and get them to spend a day or two managing the company server.

How can anyone find a decent developer for $80k? Even not factoring in overhead and benefit costs.
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