Announcement Downtime Report: 2015-10-22 0105-0600

Xyon

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Good morning,

At 0105 UTC today, the Digital Ocean instance powering Orbiter-Forum and Orbithangar was forcibly powered off by the host due to cited failure to pay the bill for the droplet. Upon investigation, it appears that while a transaction had been requested from Paypal to Digital Ocean, this payment had not been successful, and any notification of this was suppressed for an unknown reason.

As of 0600 UTC the balance has been cleared and the system is back online. We will be pursuing the matter with Paypal.

We are sorry for the loss of service.
 

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How much time was between the failed transaction (the first one if there were more) and the forced service shutdown?

Why did the transaction fail? Too few money in the account?
 

Xyon

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How much time was between the failed transaction (the first one if there were more) and the forced service shutdown?

Why did the transaction fail? Too few money in the account?

I pay the bill on the 20th, usually. Since that was September, we got over a month of usage before they shut the instance off for non-payment.

The transaction failure reason isn't noted - in fact the record of the transaction doesn't exist in PayPal, which makes me suspect that PayPal either never processed it, or never received it at all. A little more vigilance on my part might have picked up on the lack of a payment confirmation email, but I did not make the connection at the time.
 

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I pay the bill on the 20th, usually.

So it is a manual process you have to do every month? Is there a possibility to check whether or not the current month balance is done on DO?

I think a state check (look at the balance if everything is right) is better than a event confirmation (email confirming payment transaction). Of course that's only possible if there is such a thing at all.
 

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I know that PayPal had some problems with their service, at least in my region, between September 17-18, so since it's relatively close to September 20 it could have had some problems at that time in UK, too.

For me there were for sure delays with recording payment transactions / showing the status of the payment, although the PayPal account balance in the selected currency was decreasing, the transfers were actually recorded and finalized (with confirmation e-mails being sent) only some 6-10 hours later (and it's usually instant, up to some half of a minute), but I've had no rejected/canceled or other unrecorded money returns back to my account.
 

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So it is a manual process you have to do every month? Is there a possibility to check whether or not the current month balance is done on DO?

Yes, it's a manual process. I drew the date up closer to when I pay for my own server, so they happen at the same time, and I don't forget.

I think a state check (look at the balance if everything is right) is better than a event confirmation (email confirming payment transaction). Of course that's only possible if there is such a thing at all.

Interestingly there does now appear to be a "balance alert" feature that I will be making use of, yes. It certainly wasn't there last time I looked.

I know that PayPal had some problems with their service, at least in my region, between September 17-18, so since it's relatively close to September 20 it could have had some problems at that time in UK, too.

For me there were for sure delays with recording payment transactions / showing the status of the payment, although the PayPal account balance in the selected currency was decreasing, the transfers were actually recorded and finalized (with confirmation e-mails being sent) only some 6-10 hours later (and it's usually instant, up to some half of a minute), but I've had no rejected/canceled or other unrecorded money returns back to my account.

Normally I would expect to see a trace of that transaction, but looking through I can't see that it ever existed in PayPal. I have a PCI audit ongoing at work at the moment but I will keep digging into what happened as time permits.
 
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