Numerous iCloud Services Down for Up to 8% of Users

[ixodes]

I've been having issues logging in since yesterday. Glad they're working on it. Hope it gets fixed soon.

I can't get in either, yet Apple is improving. iCloud has been a bit better than MobileMe.

 

[waldobushman]

iCloud is built on what platform

I've read that iCloud is built upon MS Azure platform. If that is the case, are we seeing an Apple failure or an MS failure?

 

[mrsir2009]

...Which is why people shouldn't rely on 'cloud' services.

 

[rmwebs]

...Which is why people shouldn't rely on 'cloud' services.

iCloud isnt actually a cloud service in the typical sense of the word. A cloud is usually geographically redundant, in that it is spread across multiple datacenters all over the world. iCloud is based in 1 datacenter,with a caching datacenter in California. This is why its occasionally slow as hell to use in Europe.

In comparison, the likes of Google, Amazon, etc all have at least one Datacenter on the east and west coast, and then in Europe, Asia, etc.

As it stands, Apple's attempt at a cloud is pretty pathetic.

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I've read that iCloud is built upon MS Azure platform. If that is the case, are we seeing an Apple failure or an MS failure?

Apple used Azure for iTunes content distribution before iCloud was around, and before they had their own big Datacenter. There is still some stuff on Azure, but the downtime was Apple - not Azure.

Basically Apple is phasing out Azure, but likely still do have some reliance on it as they are still very behind in their datacenter rollout.

You'd be very aware if Azure went down as a lot of places rely on it.

 

[chaosbunny]

...Which is why people shouldn't rely on 'cloud' services.

Exactly. If someone has problems now it's his own fault.

 

[SimonTheSoundMa]

...Which is why people shouldn't rely on 'cloud' services.

Apple have already wiped my account clean of all data as they thought I was a spammer. I wrote emails while offline, as soon as I went online they all sent at once. It was around 30 emails.

Address book, emails, calendars, bookmarks, all deleted. Couldn't use iMessage either.

Recovered from a Time Machine backup thank goodness. Apple Care said they could not recover anything.

 

[Baklava]

Safari Bookmarks doesn't work for me anymore. ARGH!

 

[Rodimus Prime]

...Which is why people shouldn't rely on 'cloud' services.

if a 'cloud' services are done right (aka not like Apple) in many ways it is better than using onsight or on device services as they have multiple redundancies so it should keep running even if one location is completely wiped out by a nature disaster like flooding that can take one down for a while. Now you might be limping along at a slower level if the primary one is knocked out.

 

[iRCL]

This is a shock?

Apple and online services have never mixed and probably never will. It doesn't matter how much money they throw at it.

It would be great to be optimistic about thing and hope they improve but after a decade of constant screw ups and let downs it very difficult to do.

Apple's biggest problem is they have all these iToy's using the very small infrastructure they have placing it under extreme stress. To keep things running smoothly they should have had these new data centres built 5 years ago when they started the iToy's. That way they could have measured demand from one launch to another and set future plans for infrastructure expansion into motion ahead of time.

Instead they wait till the horse has bolted to close the stable door.

You're so brilliant, I see that you're able to analyze the countless challenges and difficulties, find the biggest one, and solve all of these problems through one paragraph of a forum post

- How do you know they're throwing a lot of money at it
- How do you know it's a very small infrastructure
- How do you know the stress level of that infrastructure
- How do you know they haven't measured demand in some way

You don't. You have no idea what is causing the outage

 

[Akarin]

Although the iCloud support page says that all services are working, I still can't get in iMessage (locked on "activating") on my iPhone and can't get updates in the App Store on my Mac (time out).

I never thought I would be even thinking about this but I think I will move back my e-mails, contacts and calendars back to my own server running Exchange.

 

[G4DP]

You're so brilliant, I see that you're able to analyze the countless challenges and difficulties, find the biggest one, and solve all of these problems through one paragraph of a forum post

- How do you know they're throwing a lot of money at it
- How do you know it's a very small infrastructure
- How do you know the stress level of that infrastructure
- How do you know they haven't measured demand in some way

You don't. You have no idea what is causing the outage

Whilst all you can do is moan about someones post on a forum.

You don't think these massive data centres cost a lot of money? If the infrastructure was large enough, they wouldn't need to build any more of them would they?

 

[Gasu E.]

iMessage doesn't seem to work for me right meow.

On the Internet, no one knows you're a cat... usually.

 

[Baklava]

Safari Bookmarks doesn't work for me anymore. ARGH!

Bookmarks on all iOS devices mysteriously back again.

 

[thefourthpope]

I was in the 92% on this one, but it's never reassuring how frequently this happens

 

[zackify]

I can't retrieve my icloud mail, it keeps timing out on my iPad Mini.