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

community.influxdata.com

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

#141

Post by cowl »

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 the suppliers have abused this form of communication to the point it's not useful for serious communication anymore. I cant read you 1000 marketing emails to find out that one single important service related one.

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

#142

Post by wiseowise »

justin_oaks wrote: post #19
berkle4455 wrote: post #10

It's almost like using bullshit hype-hype-hype databases, especially their cloud offerings, is a horrible idea.

Nobody is complaining about the database, they're complaining about poor communication. It could happen with anything that depends on a 3rd party.

> Nobody is complaining about the database

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36663023

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36661448

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

#143

Post by asgeirn »

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…

Former Belgium user here. Checked my inbox, no emails from Influx since June 2022.

Then again, I was only using the free tier, so I guess I got what I paid for.

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

#144

Post by cowl »

fooker wrote: post #49

I can understand the outrage about deleted data, but has anyone figured out why they are shutting down in Belgium?

What I don't understand is why they have not auto migrated all customer data to the closest region. Why ask the customers to do this migration instead of transparently handling it for them? yes the cost may be different but this was their decision, they should absorb these costs until the customers decide.

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

#145

Post by sberder »

ssd532 wrote: post #69
manquer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a buyer I have come to expect good vendors to design systems so mistakes (my team or yours) don't cost me sleep or you business.[3] i.e. - they do soft-deletes before hard - have robust access control systems and partitioning - so we don't have to give access to everyone in the org to object model with full r/w - don't instantly nuke the account if a payment goes astray or delayed - try to reach out before to a po…

> don't instantly nuke the account if a payment goes astray or delayed Hetzner deleted my server just one week after my payment due date. My credit card failed the payment for some reason. I didn’t notice this because I was ill with Covid. They sent me one email (or at least, I received only one email) as a warning. I only realized the server was gone when my services stopped working. I’m not sure if such a short war…

I've had the exact same experience with them. After 10 years using that server, one payment failed, about ten days and they nuked the machine. German efficiency I suppose.

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

#146

Post by jacquesm »

rvba wrote: post #139
jacquesm wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the end of the day you are the one who pays for the fedex though.

Not really, no. Mortgage payments are interest and principal, not administrative fees beyond what you paid when you signed the original contract.

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

#147

Post by mrweasel »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #103
throwawaysleep wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What? Each and everyone of our suppliers have a dedicate address their notification are sent to. Those automatically goes into the service desk as a ticket and is read by the service desk team, which can either correct billing information if required, or escalate to the correct team if action is require or there's any doubt about the content of the email.

If you have 20.000 engineers (or even 200) you have a functional service desk and I assure you that no individual engineers email is given as the email for vendors to contact. Even for large contract where you have a preferred contact on each end, there's an escalation path.

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

#148

Post by ratg13 »

mlhpdx wrote: post #60
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…

Contrary to the majority of the thread here, I find this to be an architectural issue. For whatever reason the system was designed without a way to communicate important service and maintenance issues to the customer. That’s part of the good architectural design of a system – it must include human factors, communication among them.

I’ve worked at companies that aren’t even in the tech sector with less than 10 people and brownouts were SOP.

This is just regular old incompetence/negligence/greed.

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

#149

Post by kgeist »

amluto wrote: post #73
pauldix wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> After that we make best efforts but if people can’t respond to vendors they pay money to, we’re really at a loss. Using billing contacts for this is a mess. The billing contact could be an accounts payable department that will check the invoice against the contract or PO and pay it. It could be an outsourced office that has no idea what a database is. It could be someone who only catches up on email once every few…

I like that Zoom allows to provide a developer email so as a developer, I only receive emails about API changes. I've never missed an email from them.

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

#150

Post by ratg13 »

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…

If you are responsible for this the very least you can do is own up to it and apologize.

Trying to assert that you were doing what you thought was right only presents the image that your company is run poorly.

The correct thing to do is to admit that your best efforts were not aligned with best practices, and look into remediation.

Not “well, we tried”

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