Google Cloud Outages

I've written numerous times about cloud availability. Last year I posted about an outage in Microsoft's Azure service.

Some of my comments were:

Recently there was an 11 hour outage of Microsoft's Azure storage services.

Again users were hard pressed to get details on the outage as "the Service Health Dashboard and Azure Management Portal both rely on Azure."

Cloud outages don't have to be like that.

Here're the communications from Google on a pair of recent outages in their cloud services.

Gmail Outage

November 3, 2015 1:21:00 AM PST

We're investigating reports of an issue with Gmail. We will provide more information shortly.

November 3, 2015 1:38:00 AM PST

Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by November 3, 2015 2:38:00 AM PST with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.

This issue is affecting IMAP and SMTP delivery

November 3, 2015 1:48:00 AM PST

Our team is continuing to investigate this issue. We will provide an update by November 3, 2015 2:48:00 AM PST with more information about this problem. Thank you for your patience.

This issue is affecting incoming POP, SMTP and IMAP connections.

November 3, 2015 2:25:00 AM PST

The problem with Gmail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

Four posts in just over one hour.

Google Calendar Outage

November 4, 2015 8:20:00 AM PST

We're investigating reports of an issue with Google Calendar. We will provide more information shortly.

November 4, 2015 9:25:00 AM PST

Google Calendar service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users within the next 1 hours. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change.

November 4, 2015 10:25:00 AM PST

The problem with Google Calendar should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

Three posts in just over two hours.

Everybody is going to have outages. But this is the way to handle them.