Availability of Xara Servers

I am trying to do some work with my Xara applications.

The Xara On-line Content Catalogue is not responding.
I get nothing but static.
Shift+Alt+I displays a Arrow pointing downleft with a plus-minus sign.

If I pick Check for Updates, I get you need to be on-line to use this feature.
Across all my Xara products.

In trying http://downloadsv15.xara.com/web/catalog/index.html, I get the site cannot be reached.
http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/down....xara.com.html reports the server is down.

In today's current Cloud technology, 98% availability (your EULA) is not good enough.
Please provide a mechanism where you provide the full local access to resources without tying it to the Internet.
Restoring a local content search would be slightly useful too.

Acorn

@Ben.Moses, glad you've spotted this Post.
Other problems here: https://www.talkgraphics.com/showthr...ner-Premium-15.

Acorn

Hi Acorn,

Thank you for reporting this to us, we have passed it onto our Sysadmin for him to look into.

Apparently our service provider is having a bit of an issue, we'll try to keep you posted with updates as much as we can, but we are trying to get this sorted as soon as possible!

Thanks,
Ben

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ben.Moses

Hi Acorn,
Thank you for reporting this to us, we have passed it onto our Sysadmin for him to look into.
Apparently our service provider is having a bit of an issue, we'll try to keep you posted with updates as much as we can, but we are trying to get this sorted as soon as possible!
Thanks, Ben

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As ever thank you Ben.

Perhaps it ought not be down to a Customer to flag a server availability issue.
If it has to be so, there needs to be a formal mechanism in place that is separate from the normal infrastructure.
For instance, https://support.xara.com/, is also currently off.

The MAGIX Support, https://support2.magix.com/customer/en/, on asking "Who do I contact about my XARA product?"
helpfully directs you to http://support.xara.com/.

Kentucky Fried Chicken moment? (UK change of service provision joke).

Acorn

OK, so I thought I would jump to the Xara Online Designer, which is available (https://cloud.ixara.com/).

I can build and save and make changes.
When I come to SHARE, http://shared.xara.com/ is also down.

Frustrated,
Acorn

P.S. Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery are on my CV.

Hi,

Apologies, the networking issues have been fixed which was caused by third-party services that had some major power outages and their backup systems also failed. Apologies for the inconvience caused.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

Please provide a mechanism where you provide the full local access to resources without tying it to the Internet.
Restoring a local content search would be slightly useful too.
Acorn

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Please remember you can download the contents of the Content Catalogue by opening the Local Designs Gallery on the right-hand side, right-clicking on a folder > Download all. This will take a little while to do but means you can access the contents regardless of online connectivity.

Thanks,
Rob

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rob-Xar

Hi,
Apologies, the networking issues have been fixed which was caused by third-party services that had some major power outages and their backup systems also failed. Apologies for the inconvience caused.

Please remember you can download the contents of the Content Catalogue by opening the Local Designs Gallery on the right-hand side, right-clicking on a folder > Download all. This will take a little while to do but means you can access the contents regardless of online connectivity. Thanks,Rob

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Rob, thank you. The point about downloading content is only part of the tale. When the servers are down, you are stymied in searching through any of the downloaded content.

It took me all of 5 minutes to use Notepad++ Find in Files to search out everything in the catindex.txt files under %appdata%\..\Local\Xara\XtremePro\15\Cache\designs \eng.
Later, I put all into MS Excel and hyperlinked to file location and to run the XAR files, etc to open into Xara.

Now I could have turn the data into a standalone application with thumbnails (as they already exist) but this was for my sole use and ws not production quality.
You are the vendor, go build.

The downside is i have to do this every time there are changes to the local gallery contents and this takes 5 minutes.

Acorn

P.S. You can even use Notepad to search the raw data: Attachment 120357
The data file is 2.26MB hence is had to be zipped for TG upload.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rob-Xar

Hi,

Apologies, the networking issues have been fixed which was caused by third-party services that had some major power outages and their backup systems also failed. Apologies for the inconvience caused.

(snip)
Rob

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If you guys ever need help with data center / cloud strategy, DR/BC, ITSM, etc., let me know! (seriously)

- Jon

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Acorn

As ever thank you Ben.

Perhaps it ought not be down to a Customer to flag a server availability issue.

(snip)

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@Acorn - from your comments, I'm guessing my comment will be akin to "preaching to the choir", but there's virtually no good reason to count on human reporting to detect outages for servers, network and/or applications at this point. Most companies outsource either support for their own data centers, use third party hosted services and/or cloud services - and pretty much *all* of these claim 99.99% (or better uptime) and 24x7 monitoring and alerting, but reality tends to be very different than the claims. Seems that perhaps hosting and support agreements need to be tightened up, with tight SLA's and penalties (and positive incentives as well for good performance).

Jon

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jonstrong

@Acorn - from your comments, I'm guessing my comment will be akin to "preaching to the choir", but there's virtually no good reason to count on human reporting to detect outages for servers, network and/or applications at this point. Most companies outsource either support for their own data centers, use third party hosted services and/or cloud services - and pretty much *all* of these claim 99.99% (or better uptime) and 24x7 monitoring and alerting, but reality tends to be very different than the claims. Seems that perhaps hosting and support agreements need to be tightened up, with tight SLA's and penalties (and positive incentives as well for good performance).

Jon

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I reckon, 99.99% is 53 minutes downtime a year, which I'll be happy with provided it's when I am sleeping.

Acorn

Yesterday i bought Web designer and got the same problem, The website catalogus is al grey and if i bought the buy button it only says it does nothing? I can buy the product again on that page :S

I got 9 days left to return my product, hope this will be solved soon.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sander

Yesterday i bought Web designer and got the same problem, The website catalogus is al grey and if i bought the buy button it only says it does nothing? I can buy the product again on that page :S
I got 9 days left to return my product, hope this will be solved soon.

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sander, welcome to TalkGraphics.
It is probably nothing to do with server availability. If you can get to a Buy button then the servers are up.
Your Registration has not activated properly. Raise a ticket with Magix straight away.

Acorn

Thank you i will make a ticket.