# "New Hardware"



## Xenke (Mar 18, 2011)

I'm not sure who would know this, but I'm just throwing it out there: what new hardware is being installed on Sunday?

I'm asking this out of curiosity. Also because I'm not sure why it couldn't have just been stated in the FA mainsite announcement.

I'm all for betting the site, it just seems a little strange to me that suddenly they're installing this mysterious piece of hardware when many people would like to see some improvement on the software side of things.

Unless of course this is some sort of box that fixes our DDoS problems.


----------



## Eevee (Mar 18, 2011)

Doesn't FA already have several unused servers?


----------



## CerbrusNL (Mar 18, 2011)

It's a HugBox (TM)

[Ninja-edit] Oh, eevee's still here, it seems?


----------



## Bobskunk (Mar 18, 2011)

Oh, yeah, looks like Eevee said what I was going to say.  e;fb and all.  It's strange that buying more hardware is acceptable and apparently viewed as cost effective, compared to.. I dunno, rewriting the backend so that a site as relatively simple as FA doesn't require Blue Gene to avoid throwing errors and blank pages



CerbrusNL said:


> It's a HugBox (TM)
> 
> [Ninja-edit] Oh, eevee's still here, it seems?


 
what is this supposed to mean?  "it's powered by weasels!  i should ban eevee!"?


----------



## Accountability (Mar 18, 2011)

Eevee said:


> Doesn't FA already have several unused servers?


 
I doubt they're adding servers. Besides, didn't Yak recently say they don't have enough power left to add more servers?

The length of the downtime makes me think it's either a power upgrade or a network upgrade (even though FA's hardware has redundancy that should eliminate downtime for anything other than "we're doing something with the physical server").

Or maybe they're finally moving out of that gigantic, expensive rack they've only filled 1/3 of the way.


----------



## CerbrusNL (Mar 18, 2011)

Bobskunk said:


> what is this supposed to mean?  "it's powered by weasels!  i should ban eevee!"?


 Just sayin', I haven't seen eevee post in a while. Mind if I notice a forum user being gone for a moment?
Same for accountability. Funny they turn up at the same time, though. [/conspiracy theories etc, blablabla]


----------



## Lobar (Mar 18, 2011)

probably more RAMdisks


----------



## Taralack (Mar 18, 2011)

Lobar said:


> probably more RAMdisks


 
for Dragoneer to RAM his dick in


----------



## yak (Mar 18, 2011)

Eevee said:


> Doesn't FA already have several unused servers?


Hardware does not necessarily mean servers. In this case, we're upgrading our power infrastructure with new PDUs.



Bobskunk said:


> Oh, yeah, looks like Eevee said what I was going to say.  e;fb and all.  It's strange that buying more hardware is acceptable and apparently viewed as cost effective, compared to.. I dunno, rewriting the backend so that a site as relatively simple as FA doesn't require Blue Gene to avoid throwing errors and blank pages
> 
> what is this supposed to mean?  "it's powered by weasels!  i should ban eevee!"?


I said this before and I'll say it again. You don't know even a third of how FA is set up and ran, stop this ridiculous speculation and accusations because it makes you look like a fool. A rude and arrogant fool.

No matter how much you optimize your code you still have a file server that needs raw I/O capacity to serve out a billion of files every hour. Not everything revolves around and is dependent on the code regardless of how good or bad it is. Just saying. But that's not even the case here.

The pending outage is not even related to the code or the servers, it's an upgrade of the  power and network infrastructure. If you care enough to know the facts you could have just asked instead of spouting popular bullshit of the "FA sucks and making fun of it is what the kool kids do" genre.



Accountability said:


> I doubt they're adding servers. Besides, didn't Yak recently say they don't have enough power left to add more servers?
> 
> The length of the downtime makes me think it's either a power upgrade or a network upgrade (even though FA's hardware has redundancy that should eliminate downtime for anything other than "we're doing something with the physical server").


It's a power upgrade (installing PDUs) and network infrastructure change. While the former does not necessarily required downtime, the latter does.


----------



## Lobar (Mar 18, 2011)

yak said:


> If you care enough to know the facts you could have just asked instead of spouting popular bullshit of the "FA sucks and making fun of it is what the kool kids do" genre.


 
If speculation really bothers you that much you could have made the details available up-front when the announcement was made.  It's not the users' fault that the FA staff has adopted a culture of secrecy and non-answers.


----------



## Bobskunk (Mar 18, 2011)

Haha yak calling me a rude and arrogant fool.  Please allow me some time for my eyes to uncross themselves.

Lobar nailed it.  People speculating on "things they know nothing about" are because YOU DELIBERATELY KEEP EVERYTHING A SECRET.

FA's public relations is a billboard version of :iiam:.  Nobody knows a thing because very little is allowed to be said to the public.  In the absence of reliable, official information, people speculate and draw conclusions on information that may not be correct.  That is the cost of ensuring nothing decisive or pertinent is said until it's obsessively perfected, or at such a time when nobody cares at all.  The only thing that's changed since December is that private LJ communities aren't the first to get any kind of idea as to what's going on with the site.  We still get, at best, "Surprise!  Site's going down now for maintenance."  I'm also pretty sure that some of the most frank discussions yet were Dragoneer's december-attack journals, and a bunch of them got deleted.  Despite a promise of some kind of post-mortem/damage report once it's all been written up, it's been swept under the rug and nothing's been said since.  Those misconceptions you gripe about?  They still float around because they haven't been dispelled and debunked and corrected.  Either you give the userbase some information as to understand what's going on, and correct rumors spread by "KOOL KIDS" and other enemies of FA, or you clam up and accept that's what happens in an information vacuum.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp!!!  Also, please tell me if "You could have just asked" is you being ironic.  I can't tell.  FA isn't one of the more responsive enterprises around, and it's not for lack of communication avenues or time.

Besides, it says on the help.furaffinity.net site itself that you have unused servers.  "New hardware" in the way FA's used the term in the past implies yet another box, either donated or purchased, being fitted into the rack.  Is that what's happening, an entirely new server is going into the rack?  No?  Is it one of the off-and-unused servers being given a purpose other than to take up rackspace?  No?  Oh, it's networking changes and power upgrades.  I have to get that information in a post decrying my "spouting of popular bullshit" and calling me a rude and arrogant fool.  You're acting like a grump, like Pi or nrr or Eevee.  I cannot help but be suspicious of your information.  Maybe if you tried being polite, I'd be more receptive?


----------



## Xenke (Mar 18, 2011)

Ok, so, PDUs.

Why couldn't this have been posted with the announcement? A simple change in wording would not only help being feel like FA is going down for a good reason, but it would also keep speculation down.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if most of the people have no idea what you're talking about, as long as you provide specifics their is little room for misinformation.

Also, yak, it is in bad taste for you to snap at people for not knowing the workings of the site. You don't talk to people. I sent you a note about a few minor errors with the site over a month ago and you didn't even bother to open it. Don't bother reading it now though, it's being taken care of.


----------



## Eevee (Mar 18, 2011)

yak said:


> Hardware does not necessarily mean servers. In this case, we're upgrading our power infrastructure with new PDUs.


Thanks for the details, though I'm a little disturbed that you put five times as much effort into ranting at another user for not knowing... details.


----------



## Riavis (Mar 18, 2011)

Have staff always been this hostile?


----------



## Aden (Mar 18, 2011)

Riavis said:


> Have staff always been this hostile?


 
I will kick you in the ear


----------



## Carenath (Mar 18, 2011)

Bobskunk said:


> *snip*


You opened the conversation, with assumptions based on incorrect, incomplete or deliberately manipulated information. When subsequently presented with correct information from an official source, you yourself admitted that had we provided that information you wouldn't have made such prior assumptions, yet, you never _asked_ first for that information.

This isn't even addressing the point, about how rude and passive-agressive your initial post was to begin with. You suggest, that if we were polite, you might be more receptive, perhaps you should take your own advice.

In contrast, while Eevee made an assumption, also based on incorrect or incomplete information, he linked to his source and phrased it as a question. He subsequently thanked when his question was answered.





Eevee said:


> Thanks for the details, though I'm a little disturbed that you put five times as much effort into ranting at another user for not knowing... details.


 


Riavis said:


> Have staff always been this hostile?


 Nope.


----------



## Eevee (Mar 18, 2011)

Carenath said:


> In contrast, while Eevee made an assumption, also based on incorrect or incomplete information, he linked to his source and phrased it as a question. He subsequently thanked when his question was answered.


Whoa, now, don't use me as your example.  I've asked endless questions that have never received responses, and I frequently complain that FA's own official disclosures are full of holes and scattered across a dozen sites.  Take for example these clarifications on the new hardware, which are only available in this non-blessed thread, and which were seemingly only provided because people grumbled.

You skipped the other part of my response, which notes the recent 1:5 ratio of "information" vs "yelling at users for not having enough information".  If FA put into releasing information the effort that it currently spends accosting users for not having it, this might not be a problem.


----------



## nrr (Mar 18, 2011)

Carenath said:


> You opened the conversation, with assumptions based on incorrect, incomplete or deliberately manipulated information. When subsequently presented with correct information from an official source, you yourself admitted that had we provided that information you wouldn't have made such prior assumptions, yet, you never _asked_ first for that information.
> 
> This isn't even addressing the point, about how rude and passive-agressive your initial post was to begin with. You suggest, that if we were polite, you might be more receptive, perhaps you should take your own advice.
> 
> In contrast, while Eevee made an assumption, also based on incorrect or incomplete information, he linked to his source and phrased it as a question. He subsequently thanked when his question was answered.



This word you keep using... I don't think it means what you're taking it to mean.  What's actually happening is a drawing of conclusions with incomplete or incorrect information.  Assumptions are a pre-condition of sorts before logical connectives even come into play.

The correct trite phrase to use would be "jumping to conclusions."  If everyone were making assumptions, there would be no conclusive remarks; the language would be more speculative than accusatory or expository.


----------



## Heimdal (Mar 18, 2011)

Why is staff being overly defensive, and hostile because "they were rude first"?

This just doesn't seem very well thought through.

Question was answered, and critique on lack of communication was still valid. Focussing on the etiquette of it all is... What?


----------



## Bobskunk (Mar 18, 2011)

Carenath said:


> You opened the conversation, with assumptions based on incorrect, incomplete or deliberately manipulated information. When subsequently presented with correct information from an official source, you yourself admitted that had we provided that information you wouldn't have made such prior assumptions, yet, you never _asked_ first for that information.



Maybe you should try improving your releases.



> This isn't even addressing the point, about how rude and passive-agressive your initial post was to begin with. You suggest, that if we were polite, you might be more receptive, perhaps you should take your own advice.



This was a comment on how most of yak's recent posts have been to the effect of "YOU ARE IDIOTS AND YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT."  I was also getting in a dig because you love to reject the assistance of the three I mentioned, and others, because the FA staff in charge of things don't like their tone.  After years of trying to get through to you people about clear problems and giving offers to fix it, the main cause for rejecting their advice or concerns is that you don't like their attitude.  Yet it is the same attitude yak has been displaying.

However, while Pi and Eevee and nrr and the like were trying desperately to have some kind of productive result with a few exasperated comments in there, yak starts out with exasperated comments and occasionally sprinkles useful information in it.



> In contrast, while Eevee made an assumption, also based on incorrect or incomplete information, he linked to his source and phrased it as a question. He subsequently thanked when his question was answered.



Like I said in my prior post, please tell me you're joking here.  If the announcement was just a little bit clearer, substituting generic "hardware" with "power and network upgrades and reconfiguration" then you wouldn't have people asking questions.  It's like these announcements are written to intentionally give the smallest possible amount of information.  If your big central announcements were more specific, then people wouldn't have to ask as many questions, in various places, since you'd be otherwise be answering individually or on other media like the forums or twitter.

This need-to-know basis is much too silly.  This is a furry art gallery, not an institution requiring classification of every possible event.  The management of appearances at this place is pretty ass-backwards, too.  If something happens and people speculate due to a lack of information, you correct misinformation rather than telling everyone to shut up because they don't know anything.  Sheesh.

Oh, and users haven't always been this hostile, either.  It's getting to be like cop vs. citizen type animosity, and that doesn't happen overnight.


----------



## Armaetus (Mar 18, 2011)

It would be nice to see "hardware" being changed to something more specific so people know what is actually being changed. Be informative with your userbase or you will have people asking questions such as seen in this thread.


----------



## Heimdal (Mar 19, 2011)

I'm definitely missing a lot of info here, but what happened to Ashleyashes? How can a discussion post be deemed "counter-productive"? Was it delete-worthy in any rational way? And how does it lead to a ban?

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong discussion, but this looks incredibly fishy right here.


----------



## Xenke (Mar 19, 2011)

Heimdal said:


> I'm definitely missing a lot of info here, but what happened to Ashleyashes? How can a discussion post be deemed "counter-productive"? Was it delete-worthy in any rational way? And how does it lead to a ban?
> 
> Maybe I'm looking at the wrong discussion, but this looks incredibly fishy right here.


 
Wait, what the fuck? Admittedly, I missed what he posted, but as far as I know he doesn't have a sort of history that warrants a ban.

Also, I thought Carenath had stepped away from the forums because of earlier incidents.

Anyway, shit, I feel bad that this thread led to someone getting banned who I don't want banned.


----------



## Accountability (Mar 19, 2011)

Carenath said:


> Nope.


 
You're right, only recently have they started acting like they are above everyone else, treating the site users like they're expendables and that if they don't like something, they should GTFO. That's a great way to run a site... into the ground. Treating your users with hostility is a great way to make them leave.

FA desperately needs a few people to fill a PR-type role. People who would be the go-between for rude staff members and the userbase. It's obvious that _some_ of FA's staff members just can't talk to people without treating them like garbage. Of course, the only way this would work is if staff actually gave these people information and did it without driving them insane. These people would also be responsible for manning the FA Twitter and probably should work on the Knowledgebase too.



yak said:


> I  said this before and I'll say it again. You don't know even a third of  how FA is set up and ran, stop this ridiculous speculation and  accusations because it makes you look like a fool. A rude and arrogant  fool.


You, sir, are part of the problem. I've been told you're one of the people responsible for why details never get out. Well guess what, when you refuse to give details, people are going to make assumptions and jump to conclusions. If you don't want to see that happen, be more forthcoming in providing details about things like this. The more details you give, the less people can bitch about something. Saying "We're adding hardware" produces a thread like this. Saying "We're adding *specific PDU* and *specific networking stuff*" will, if anything, produce a thread bitching about the hardware itself, which inevitable because there are plenty of geeks on this forum. EDIT: Are these by any chance the same PDU's that were supposed to be installed in early January?

I'm glad to see that this downtime was announced properly via the mainsite, now the next step is providing details when details can be given.


----------



## Taralack (Mar 19, 2011)

Accountability said:


> FA desperately needs a few people to fill a PR-type role.


 
Sounds like Ratte. :V


----------



## Diocletian (Mar 19, 2011)

Could we have a clarification from a forum admin/Carenath over Carenath's ban of AshleyAshes and the deletion of Ashley's post.

TY.


----------



## Arshes Nei (Mar 19, 2011)

Toraneko said:


> Sounds like Ratte. :V


 
No.


----------



## TakeWalker (Mar 19, 2011)

Eevee said:


> Whoa, now, don't use me as your example.


 
Eevee is now the Gallant to Bobskunk's Goofus.


----------



## Arshes Nei (Mar 19, 2011)

These are the kind of messages I get from my provider for web sites I help out on. Posting one below. I get them through email of course but may be a good demonstration of how to alert of downtime.

_Good day,

As part of our commitment to provide quality web hosting services, we are contacting you today to inform you about an emergency upgrade to our network that has been scheduled this evening. Please read the details below carefully.

Scheduled Date:
Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Time Frame:
01:00 AM EST - 03:00 AM EST

Maintenance Type:
Our network administrators will be performing an emergency upgrade to our core routers to improve connectivity and to further increase the reliability of our infrastructure.

Estimated Downtime:
We understand the importance of limiting downtime during upgrades to our network and will do our best to avoid any issues. As it stands, no downtime is expected but you may notice extended latency or disconnects during the maintenance window.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to submit a support ticket or contact us through our Live Concierge Chat system.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please plan accordingly._


----------



## Armaetus (Mar 19, 2011)

My question is WHY isn't FA providing something as detailed like that instead of just generic "new hardware" and nothing else? "New hardware" can mean anything, router, new disks, rack, power supply, etc so come on don't leave us users in the dark and guessing!

Also Accountability does make some good points, this site needs at least 2 PR people so Yak doesn't have to respond in an arrogant tone to US, which I find to to be unprofessional.


----------



## SnowFox (Mar 19, 2011)

Wow, did Ashley really just get banned for mentioning the ... plugin that mustn't be named?

Edit:

fuck it

<SNIP>


----------



## CerbrusNL (Mar 19, 2011)

Ashley isn't permbanned. And he did more than just mention that, but that's not a discussion for in this topic.


----------



## Armaetus (Mar 19, 2011)

Derp, nvm.


----------



## net-cat (Mar 19, 2011)

Okay, there you go. I've updated the message with what we're installing. I'll make sure I put in more details next time.


----------

