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back to article PayPal hardware failure fingered for worldwide outage

Hardware failure hit PayPal on Friday, leaving the payment service unavailable for around two and half hours. A network hardware failure in one of its data centres and the failure of back-up systems to kick in as quickly as planned meant the service was unavailable for around two hours on Friday morning (US Pacific time). A …

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  1. JaitcH
    Pint

    "it was investigating how to prevent any future re-occurrence of similar problems."

    Most likely it was a sneak attack by Cryptome and all those other account holders it shafted by freezing their accounts.

    Users can cure the problem promptly, user a reputable service. Even AmEx is in on the business and they are experts at shifting money, especially circumventing currency controls for valued customers.

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  2. CD001

    Pffff...

    Pffff... amateurs - they have to try a LOT harder to get the kind of outages that SagePay seem to suffer.

    ... oh, hang on, that's a bad thing right?

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  3. Ian Michael Gumby
    Boffin

    Its one thing to put in a DR plan in place.

    Its another to actually test it.

    Yeah... no joke. To test a D/R plan, you have to set up and schedule the down time and then have the risk if it fails and something then goes wrong.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      - Test it and have it work in a real situation

      And, of course, that carefully crafted test can never actually allow for what really happens at the worst possible moment.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Grenade

      DR plan

      Yeah, I have that to look forward to next week. Should be fun as..a sigmoidoscopy

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  4. Ted Treen
    Paris Hilton

    Well,

    backup contingency plans can only be properly tested if they're stress-tested. i.e. in the event of the contingency occurring for which they're designed.

    If they're found wanting, then think again.

    See multitudinous outages experienced by virtually every bank, every ATM network, every POS system etc. in recent times.

    We live in a world reliant on complex real-time systems.

    We also live in a world where shit happens.

    It is no sin to make a mistake: it IS a sin to repeat the same mistake...

    Paris? - just 'cause I mentioned sinning...

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