Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
Summary: I subscribe to Carbonite's backup service. Over the last couple of days, the teensy Carbonite icon in my system tray has been red, displaying a message that Carbonite's servers are unavailable. Today, I sent email to tech support, only to be informed that someone would get back to me "within 72 hours." That pretty much sucks when I'm paying for a high-availability service. If my hard drive crashes and I need assistance with restore, hopefully I won't need my data within 72 hours.Anyhow, I just received an email from Carbonite, describing a server upgrade problem:
I subscribe to Carbonite's backup service. Over the last couple of days, the teensy Carbonite icon in my system tray has been red, displaying a message that Carbonite's servers are unavailable. Today, I sent email to tech support, only to be informed that someone would get back to me "within 72 hours." That pretty much sucks when I'm paying for a high-availability service. If my hard drive crashes and I need assistance with restore, hopefully I won't need my data within 72 hours.
Anyhow, I just received an email from Carbonite, describing a server upgrade problem:
Dear Michael,
Carbonite began the first phase of a system upgrade early Monday morning. Due to a server glitch, a number of customers using Carbonite version 3.5.89 have been unable to reconnect since that time, even though Carbonite's servers were unavailable for only a few hours.
We've identified your computer [computer name] as one of those affected.
Don't worry, your backup is safe, but it will not be updated until you reinstall the latest version of Carbonite as follows:
1) Go to http://www.carbonite.com/manage to log in to your account 2) Click the 'My Protected Computers' tab 3) Click the 'Reinstall' button, and follow the instructions to reinstall Carbonite on your computer
As soon as you've reinstalled, your backup will resume immediately from where it left off.
We apologize for the inconvenience this causes.
Sincerely,
The Carbonite Team
Looks like someone had a little testing problem over there with the upgrade. The email says "a number of customers" were affected. I wonder if that means all their customers.
Seems there's never enough time to test before deployment but plenty of time to fix problems after they hit customers. <Blogger shakes head in wonderment and moves on.>
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Talkback
Carbonite Online Backup - Outage
It was claimed that an upgrade was the reason for these difficulties and that the problem only affected customers who had installed version 3.5.89. This appears to be untrue.
I had installed version 3.5.90 (the current version) which was newer than the one that apparently had the problems. Why is it that my Carbonite was also down for almost 48 hours? Why is it that my friend in Singapore on version 3.5.90 also had the same problem? Why is that other people have blogged about also having similar problems?
I think that Carbonite needs to be honest with its customers when issues arise.
What's even more worrying is that this outage lasted, to the best of my knowledge for almost 2 days (and it could have been longer), is that the Carbonite online backup status page was not updated until AFTER the event and even then it doesn't appear to accurately represent what happened.
So, 2 days to realise that there's a problem?
If this continues I will be seeking a refund from Carbonite. If Carbonite isn't forthcoming with a refund then I will lodge a complaint with my credit card issuer and dispute the charge on the grounds that it has not delivered the service I have paid for.
I will be watching Carbonite like a hawk from now on.
Our data is simply too important to be stuffed around like this. Mr David Friend, CEO of Carbonite, take note!
Is there any Carbonite left?
So, the question is : Is there any Carbonite left?
Sounds fishy to me too
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
:-)
You like Mozy's restore method?
Lotsa Mozy restore options
I tried to find that option
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.
Still Out
Hmmmm....what's going on here?
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
Thank you for your clarification. It takes a lot of guts for a CEO to admit errors!
You as a CEO of Carbonite, you should be commended for your efforts and diligence to let users know what happened. You are not afraid to say, "we screwed up!"
A one time glitch should not be a big deal! Even the big guys like Yahoo, MSN and Google go down fromtime to time. The big lesson should be: Never this will happen again!
Cheers,
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
"Please follow the instructions below to reinstall Carbonite.
1. Log on to www.carbonite.com/manage.
2. Click the My Protected Computers tab.
3. Click the Reinstall button. (If you have more than one subscribed computer, you'll need to select the appropriate PC and then click the Reinstall button.)
Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation process. "
That took about 10 minutes, and everything now seems fine.
AGB
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
If you are presently still unable even to connect to the Carbonite website, you may have an unrelated issue. It is possible that your firewall is blocking the Carbonite site (although I think that's unlikely); more likely it is a DNS problem on your ISP. We've heard some reports lately that folks have had trouble connecting to our website even though it has been up and running. There's an easy way to test whether this is the problem:
1. First, go to www.carbonite.com to see if you still are unable to connect.
2. If you weren't able to connect, try again by going to http://38.97.103.136 (the direct IP address of the Carbonite website).
If you were able to connect to the website in step two above, but not in step one, your ISP's DNS server may be blocking the Carbonite website. In that case, you should contact your ISP so that they can correct the problem.
Please let us know your results.
Sincerely,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
www.carbonite.com
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
RE: Failed Carbonite upgrade lets customers down
Business users should try VOSI.biz
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Jenny
Customer Support Department
http://www.vosi.biz/
Guess what it's happening again
Guess what it happens again 7/5/2010