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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Thumbs down 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
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

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

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2015
    Posts
    290

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    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

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    Quote Originally Posted by Ben.Moses View Post
    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
    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
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    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.
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    Hertfordshire, UK
    Posts
    1,488

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    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 Originally Posted by Acorn View Post
    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
    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

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Info Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob-Xar View Post
    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
    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: catindexes.zip
    The data file is 2.26MB hence is had to be zipped for TG upload.
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    NJ, near Princeton Univ (USA), midway between NYC and Philly
    Posts
    49

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob-Xar View Post
    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
    If you guys ever need help with data center / cloud strategy, DR/BC, ITSM, etc., let me know! (seriously)

    - Jon

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    NJ, near Princeton Univ (USA), midway between NYC and Philly
    Posts
    49

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    Quote Originally Posted by Acorn View Post
    As ever thank you Ben.

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

    (snip)
    @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

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
    Location
    SW England
    Posts
    17,747

    Default Re: Availability of Xara Servers

    Quote Originally Posted by jonstrong View Post
    @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
    I reckon, 99.99% is 53 minutes downtime a year, which I'll be happy with provided it's when I am sleeping.

    Acorn
    Acorn - installed Xara software: Cloud+/Pro+ and most others back through time (to CC's Artworks). Contact for technical remediation/consultancy for your web designs.
    When we provide assistance, your responses are valuable as they benefit the community. TG Nuggets you might like. Report faults: Xara Cloud+/Pro+/Magix Legacy; Xara KB & Chat

 

 

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