GoDaddy Update

We finally know what  caused the GoDaddy crash, it was their DNS servers as I reported in my previous post.

GoDaddy has sent all its customers an apology and a 1 month credit for the September 10 crash of its site. The email read:

   

Dear Xxxx,

We owe you a big apology for the intermittent service outages we experienced on September 10 that may have impacted your website, your email and other Go Daddy services.

We let you down and we know it. We take our responsibilities — and the trust you place in us — very seriously. I cannot express how sorry I am to those of you who were inconvenienced.

The service outage was due to a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables. Once the issues were identified, we took corrective actions to restore services for our customers and GoDaddy.com. We have implemented a series of immediate measures to fix the problem.

At no time was any sensitive customer information, including credit card data, passwords or names and addresses, compromised.

Throughout our history, we have provided 99.999% uptime in our DNS infrastructure. This is the level of performance we expect from ourselves. Monday, we fell short of these expectations. We have learned from this event and will use it to drive improvement in our services.

As a result of this disruption, your account will be credited for the value of 1 month of service for each plan that has at least one active or published site (Web Hosting, Quick Shopping Cart®, Website Builder, Email, etc.).* This credit will be available to you for the next 7 days. Please click the button below to redeem your credit.



It's an honor to serve you. As always, please call us 24/7 at 480-505-8877 — anytime, for any reason.

Sincerely,

Scott Wagner
CEO
GoDaddy.com

Talk about doing the right thing. Kudos to GoDaddy for this move.

So what does this have to do with safety you ask? See my previous post here:

GoDaddy Site Crashes

GoDaddy's website crashed yesterday. So how does this affect me? Why is this on a safety blog? Is this even news?

Well it affected me. I could not do any work, development, or updates on any of my websites yesterday. As I stated in previous posts, as a safety person our jobs are becoming more intertwined with technology. What if you had your MSDS catalog web based and there was a fire last night at your plant?

If the fire department could not access the MSDS catalog online do you have a hard copy back up? Was it in the office in the building on fire? What about your procedure for accident reporting, was that only online too? So what does the night supervisor do no that he can't access the web site.

Whether you maintain the web site, have access to it, or have someone else do it, you need to ensure redundancy.

This is news because GoDaddy has thousands if not millions of web sites hosted for small and medium sized businesses. GoDaddy is also the choice for newbies because of their excellent customer service, their variety of tools, and ease of use. They were my first hosting provider and I still use them.

There are other hosting sites that more seasoned IT professionals prefer, but I am a Risk Manager, a safety person who happens to know enough about web development to be dangerous. I am in a small business. I am GoDaddy's target demographic.

GoDaddy has confirmed that its DNS problems yesterday, which caused thousands of websites to go down for most of the day, are now finished. And while an alleged member of the hacktivist group Anonymous was claiming responsibility for the situation yesterday, GoDaddy says that it wasn’t an external network attack that caused it: it was “a series of internal network events that corrupted router data tables.”

Someone (allegedly) from Anonymous posted a Tweet claiming responsibility. Later another person (allegedly) from Anonymous posted a Tweet saying that Anonymous did not do it.

Note: GoDaddy has been a target of Anonymous for supporting SOPA (see here). legislation. GoDaddy has since withdrawn support of SOPA.