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InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

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Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#101

Post by rlupi »

I suggest designing APIs so that they can return warnings and still return useful data, as opposed to only success with data, or no errors. (https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/cloud/api/#tag/Response...)

Out-of-band data, like emails, is bound to be ignored by some.

I'd incorporate warnings in the application-specific responses; you can also return a different response code to make sure many clients do not blindly ignore warnings. The HTTP standard includes a 207 Multi-Status response code, which is mostly used with WebDAV.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#102

Post by WirelessGigabit »

js2 wrote: post #34
pauldix wrote: post #29

Hi, cofounder and CTO here. We notified everyone via email on February 23, April 6 and May 15th. We also offered to help migrate all users. I realize that it's not ideal that we've shut down this system, but we made our best efforts to notify affected users and give them options to move over to other regions. If you've been impacted by this, please email me personally and I will do my best to help out: paul at influx…

Paul: I'm surprised you didn't do a scream test. Not everyone is going to see those emails and even those that do may not understand what they are reading. Internally at my company we always do scream tests as part of our EOL process because we know we can't reach everyone, even our own employees. https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/microsoft-uses-a-... Fun story: my mortgage got sold last year. Not the first…

You know, I don't really care that mortgages get sold, but the fact that I need to go out of my way every time to make sure I update my information in their system is astounding.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#103

Post by fnordpiglet »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #35
chillfox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email only is not even close to best effort. I know it’s standard to only do email for tech companies, but all other types of companies usually do physical mail and phone calls on top of emails for important notifications. I am not a customer, but it’s really annoying me how tech companies repeatedly think sending emails is somehow anything but the absolute minimum, most lazy option.

Why do customers believe that they don’t need to read their emails?

Because if a company has 20000 engineers which one is the one that gets the vendors email? Answer is usually none and the email to that address goes to /dev/null.

Or suppose an employee did have the email on file and left the company.

Or suppose people assume vendor email are spam because they’re almost always spam.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#104

Post by KingOfCoders »

pauldix wrote: post #33
chillfox wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email only is not even close to best effort. I know it’s standard to only do email for tech companies, but all other types of companies usually do physical mail and phone calls on top of emails for important notifications. I am not a customer, but it’s really annoying me how tech companies repeatedly think sending emails is somehow anything but the absolute minimum, most lazy option.

We get an email address because we need to contact our customers. After that we make best efforts but if people can’t respond to vendors they pay money to, we’re really at a loss. I realize that shutting down a region isn’t good. It’s not what we would have preferred, but we had to do it for the business. And we made an honest effort to contact all customers to help move them.

I once worked for a company that after a merger had a bank account running just to pay services it didn't know what they were for.

If you grow, have a merger, people moving, it is easy for email addresses to no longer be read. Yes there are best practices to prevent this, but most companies I have seen don't do that.

In one company important emails went to the email address (private!) of the founder, who left after M&A.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#105

Post by Scarblac »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #40
noveltyaccount wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lmao are you serious? What about emails buried in spam? What if contact x left the company and the emails are black holes? There are a million valid reasons for emails to go poof. "But we emailed you" is weak.

You actually need to read your spam to check and if a company didn’t bother transition an employee out properly (i.e figure out what their email address was attached to), why is that on the supplier? Why do they need to move mountains so that you can avoid any seriousness about your own operations?

Because their reputation is the most important asset a cloud provider has. You're asking customers to run their business on your computers, after all.

Deleting their data first and then complaining that your customers don't run a serious enough operation is not the way to keep the best reputation.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#106

Post by fastball »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #47
pauldix wrote: post #29

Hi, cofounder and CTO here. We notified everyone via email on February 23, April 6 and May 15th. We also offered to help migrate all users. I realize that it's not ideal that we've shut down this system, but we made our best efforts to notify affected users and give them options to move over to other regions. If you've been impacted by this, please email me personally and I will do my best to help out: paul at influx…

Wow, that's pretty pathetic and your attitude "we can't help our customers" is even more damning. Email is not reliable enough to simply rely on a few email blasts for this. I would expect: * Those 3 "email blast" notifications. I'm guessing one of two things happened here: * You sent them as an "email blast" from a marketing-type email service. These hit email filters because they came from a known spam IP. * You se…

From the sounds of it, it was impossible for them to keep data after the 30th of June, so not sure a soft-delete at the deadline would work. Of course the better option probably would've been a soft delete before the deadline, but you know that some customers would've said "why'd you do this before the deadline, you could've waited an extra month!"

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#107

Post by FooBarWidget »

chillfox wrote: post #30
pauldix wrote: post #29

Hi, cofounder and CTO here. We notified everyone via email on February 23, April 6 and May 15th. We also offered to help migrate all users. I realize that it's not ideal that we've shut down this system, but we made our best efforts to notify affected users and give them options to move over to other regions. If you've been impacted by this, please email me personally and I will do my best to help out: paul at influx…

Email only is not even close to best effort. I know it’s standard to only do email for tech companies, but all other types of companies usually do physical mail and phone calls on top of emails for important notifications. I am not a customer, but it’s really annoying me how tech companies repeatedly think sending emails is somehow anything but the absolute minimum, most lazy option.

At my company we used to only ask for email address. No names, no phone numbers, no mailing addresses. Because we understood that technical people don't like spam and don't like to give out their data. So we don't ask for them.

We also didn't send any reminders for them to check whether their email address was up to date. No account update reminders. To prevent annoying people with spam.

So other than sending emails and hoping that they read it, there was nothing else we could do.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#108

Post by jacquesm »

irjustin wrote: post #81
js2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul: I'm surprised you didn't do a scream test. Not everyone is going to see those emails and even those that do may not understand what they are reading. Internally at my company we always do scream tests as part of our EOL process because we know we can't reach everyone, even our own employees. https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/microsoft-uses-a-... Fun story: my mortgage got sold last year. Not the first…

> I was like: you guys should've FedEx'd me this in the first place. For all they knew, I wasn't getting their emails or letters in the first place because nothing had been sent signature required. I love the scream test, but the analogy you bring up actually - this seems unfair. The cost of Fedex'ing everyone is astounding (for many businesses). But I like the concept. Definitely a sort of "shut off the server for l…

When you buy a large, registered debt such as a mortgage the cost of Fedex'ing everyone should be factored into the sale. If that's too much money you shouldn't be buying such assets. Notifying those that are affected properly would seem to be the least you can do in such situations.

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#109

Post by DavidKarlas »

pauldix wrote: post #29

Hi, cofounder and CTO here. We notified everyone via email on February 23, April 6 and May 15th. We also offered to help migrate all users. I realize that it's not ideal that we've shut down this system, but we made our best efforts to notify affected users and give them options to move over to other regions. If you've been impacted by this, please email me personally and I will do my best to help out: paul at influx…

Why did you feel need to send 3 emails, and not just 1? Is it because you find emails not reliable enough?

Re: InfluxDB Cloud shuts down in Belgium; some weren't notified before data deletion

#110

Post by jacquesm »

pmh wrote: post #71
js2 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul: I'm surprised you didn't do a scream test. Not everyone is going to see those emails and even those that do may not understand what they are reading. Internally at my company we always do scream tests as part of our EOL process because we know we can't reach everyone, even our own employees. https://www.microsoft.com/insidetrack/blog/microsoft-uses-a-... Fun story: my mortgage got sold last year. Not the first…

> scream test I didn't realize there was an actual name for this, so I'll add another for the thread that I haven't seen brought up: email is evil in operations (EIEIO, like the nursery rhyme)

I think the analogy is to station people at various floors in a big office building while you disconnect (unmarked) cables in a legacy patch panel to see who starts screaming. Then you plug it back in and label the cable...
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