ServiceUptime.com Offline

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Posted by jfnllc, 04-25-2013, 07:18 PM
I'm not exactly sure where I'm supposed to post about service monitoring providers being completely down...but I can't access their site or my stats. It doesn't look to be resolving at all.

Gah, I had 2012's and 2013's uptime reports there - AND embedded in our site. I mean, when a provider's uptime reporting service is down...yeah, doesn't look very good.

Assuming DNS fell over based on the attached screenshot and being able to ping the IP of their NS but not the alpha names themselves.

Anyone else experiencing problems getting to serviceuptime.com today?

ns2.serviceuptime.com [192.111.130.211]
ns1.serviceuptime.com [192.111.130.210]
Posted by jfnllc, 04-25-2013, 07:36 PM
Looking further, it seems I can resolve http://192.111.130.211 (ns2) to a default Plesk control panel placeholder, but .210 is still unresponsive, though at least it appears to *attempt* to resolve and time out rather than instantly falling over as mentioned previously.

I have never used Plesk, but I assume the default page is akin to the cPanel default page when a site is moved, an or DNS zones have changed and are awaiting a refresh. Said IPs have matching reverse DNS in place for both IP's....isn't that going to cause a conflict when trying to resolve the domain?

I received no email notification of planned maintenance, and nothing new on Twitter. Confused...
Posted by foobic, 04-25-2013, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfnllc

Said IPs have matching reverse DNS in place for both IP's....isn't that going to cause a conflict when trying to resolve the domain?

I don't think so - rDNS doesn't affect forward resolution. Anyway, the two IPs are almost certainly pointing to the same server judging by the mailserver responding with the hostname "www.serviceuptime.com" (matching the rDNS). Not the most professional-looking setup though...

And as you say there's also a webserver running on the same IPs but it's not configured for the website. Perhaps the website A record was pointing to a different server? It's impossible to tell while the DNS is down.
Posted by jfnllc, 04-25-2013, 11:01 PM
The site started resolving again just moments ago. I ran two queries within minutes of each other. One failed, the other magically resolved. Still though, there's something wonky looking with the DNS. Though not relevant to the outage, the serial number defined in the zone appears incorrect, the SOA record specifies an admin email address for something called Avail Innovations, though the rest appears normal.

Since they haven't posted any type of outage notification in their updates section, I imagine either BIND fell over, or they were hard down and had to restore from backup.

Seems to me that a single point of failure (DNS or otherwise) for an uptime monitoring service is skewed. Doesn't seem as though there's much in the way of redundancy. Thankfully, their test locations remained online and didn't effect my reports. *phew*

Posted by jfnllc, 04-25-2013, 11:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by foobic

I don't think so - rDNS doesn't affect forward resolution. Anyway, the two IPs are almost certainly pointing to the same server judging by the mailserver responding with the hostname "www.serviceuptime.com" (matching the rDNS). Not the most professional-looking setup though...

And as you say there's also a webserver running on the same IPs but it's not configured for the website. Perhaps the website A record was pointing to a different server? It's impossible to tell while the DNS is down.

Possibly- but, for example, browsing to http://192.111.130.210 resolves to their site. while http://192.111.130.211 loads the place-holder. Both with matching PTR entries- so I thought maybe that could create a conflict. I've got the ability to set rDNS within my IP space, so I may test out the result of having two IP's in the same range, with identical forward resolution. Odds are you're correct, but at least I'll have the right answer if a client makes such a request in the future.

Edit: I just noticed they've added an A record for ns1 not long ago - the lack of ns2's A record would likely explain why .211 resolves the Virtuozzo placeholder.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
mail.serviceuptime.com. 84251 IN A 192.111.130.210
ns1.serviceuptime.com. 85190 IN A 192.111.130.210
Posted by RSS-Artie, 04-25-2013, 11:37 PM
Is there any reason your using small text and unreadable colors for your posts?

Website loads fine for me.
/thread
Posted by jfnllc, 04-25-2013, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RSS-Artie

Is there any reason your using small text and unreadable colors for your posts?

Website loads fine for me.
/thread

While I appreciate your reporting this to me, it doesn't appear to be small or unreadable on my side, and I figured I'd try something different from "the norm" for a change. Back to good ol' Verdana I guess.
Thanks for verifying the status of the site as well.

*edit* Okay, it does look a little wonky in Chrome vs. FF which I've been using. Thanks for the heads-up.
Posted by WyFy, 04-26-2013, 06:07 PM
Oh the irony! An service uptime site with downtime.