We are hosted primarily on AWS in us-west-2. Availability zone redundancy gives us durability in Oregon in the event that a single AZ has issues.
Streaming replication gives us region redundancy all the way to eu-west-1 (Ireland) in the event all of us-west-2 goes dark.
We take uptime very seriously and publish our uptime numbers for customers to see on our status page.
Instead of replying to the entire organization when the site goes down, you can now have them opt-in to every status update. StatusPage allows you to post in detail about specific downtime incidents. You can also list the status of each individual functional unit of your site -- so if one function of your site is down but all of the other parts are working, you can indicate exactly what’s going on.
When servers are on fire, you don't need 100 internal emails and half of the executives stopping by asking why you're down.
If something is wrong, keeping the whole devops up-to-date with the issue will help it get resolved faster. Pipe updates to your page directly into HipChat or Slack
Avoid the wrath of customers trying to access their dashboards only to find out that you are doing a major database migration by proactively notifying customers about upcoming scheduled maintenance.
What is that noise? It's the thundering heard of support tickets that come around every time your site is down. But no more! Point customers to your new status page a few times and they'll learn to go straight there when they're experiencing issues.
Downtime doesn't have to be a support nightmare. Our customers have seen dramatic reductions in support tickets that come in during downtime events.
Once users are used to checking your status page during an outage, you'll notice a dramatic decline in support tickets. You can also direct them to subscribe to updates from your status page.
The fact is, users want to know why things aren't working as soon as possible. A quick visit to your status page is the best solution.
Now that you're not spending time answering redundant questions, you can get back to helping users with novel problems.
Let's face it...you're obsessed with your customers, but you're not in the trenches on a daily basis facing off with the ever expanding server gremlins. When your servers are on fire, best chances for a quick recovery are to let your devops team take the reigns and fix the issue at hand.
Having a company status page is the best way to stay up-to-date with what's happening without getting in the way.
Even if you're not the one fixing the issue, you'd like to know what the problem is and what the team is doing to fix it.
Make sure the team is regularly posting updates during downtime. Your customers hate being left out of the loop.
Having a dedicated status page will show potential customers your commitment to uptime and that you're confident enough to be transparent about it.
