Your server crashed? BS!

26 replies
I'm not going to out the marketer that did this, but I just wanted to point out that if you're going to claim that your "server crashed" from all of the download activity your emails generated, don't let me get to your site and find out you're using Amazon S3 to host your files!

Remember, if you treat your customers like idiots you'll have idiots for customers.
#crashed #server
  • Profile picture of the author alexts
    Thanks for making me laugh
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    Dude, if the database system is on the server, where the files are hosted is pretty much irrelevant.

    Unless you know a lot more about how servers work than the OP implies, I'd avoid making comments like this.


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    • Profile picture of the author AllAboutAction
      Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.

      Nope, no database involved here. We're talking about a static sales page that serves a video directly from S3. Busted, plain and simple.
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      • Profile picture of the author E. Brian Rose
        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.

        Nope, no database involved here. We're talking about a static sales page that serves a video directly from S3. Busted, plain and simple.
        If my server crashed from hosting a video and I didn't want it to happen again, I may consider moving that video to AS3. If I do that, does that mean that the crash never took place?
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      • Profile picture of the author Rob Howard
        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.

        Nope, no database involved here. We're talking about a static sales page that serves a video directly from S3. Busted, plain and simple.
        You say nothing about the download page though.

        It is entirely possible that he wasn't serving the downloads through s3. Or it's possible his script crashed the site.

        I've had that happen before - the script, assigning downloads to people (which served on s3), eats up too many resources, causing the system to go ka-put.

        Don't automatically assume that just because he serves the free video streaming directly from s3 (his sales video), that he does the same thing with his downloads.

        Rob
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      • Profile picture of the author Andyhenry
        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.
        .
        You don't know as much as you think you do.... You're also hallucination some of these things.

        I was always sceptical of people saying their server crashed too - for many years.

        Until it happened to me.

        For me it was to do with php running out of memory and needed a memory allocation tweek. But when I tested it everything was fine - it was literally only when thousands of people came in the same day that it crashed and exposed the problem.

        It's not always trickery.
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      • Profile picture of the author ReportKing
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        • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
          Originally Posted by ReportKing View Post

          What's wrong with creating a sense of scarcity or urgency? That's just smart marketing as far as I'm concerned.
          If it's false scarcity, then it's not smart...it's a lie. True scarcity may be smart.

          All the best,
          Michael
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      • Profile picture of the author Dan C. Rinnert
        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.
        You're also overlooking the fact that some marketers are complete morons when it comes to technology and may not have known enough to make sure their servers can handle a big launch.
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        • Profile picture of the author Black Hat Cat
          Banned
          Where can I buy this product? Normally I wouldn't be interested, but knowing the server crashed makes me have to have it.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jeff Walker
        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.

        Nope, no database involved here. We're talking about a static sales page that serves a video directly from S3. Busted, plain and simple.

        I'm no expert on servers or hardware... so it sounds like you know a lot more about servers than I do.

        But I do have a bit of experience on how hard it can be to keep a server up during a major promotion.

        I once had a page that had a single line of code on it... that line of code pulled my sales letter from s3. So the entire sales letter, all video, graphics... EVERYTHING was being pulled from s3.

        The only other thing on the server besides that single page with the single line of code was an order form and my shopping cart.

        The server itself was a beefy rackspace server with nothing else on the server.

        Totally crashed that server within a minute or two of opening the promotion... took a hard reboot and about 35 minutes to bring it back up.

        Never got a really solid answer from rackspace about why it went down... but they told me it was too many simultaneous connections. When you drive a large spike of traffic to a server, there are all kinds of things that can cause a failure.


        - Jeff
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        • Profile picture of the author seasoned
          Originally Posted by Jeff Walker View Post

          I'm no expert on servers or hardware... so it sounds like you know a lot more about servers than I do.

          But I do have a bit of experience on how hard it can be to keep a server up during a major promotion.

          I once had a page that had a single line of code on it... that line of code pulled my sales letter from s3. So the entire sales letter, all video, graphics... EVERYTHING was being pulled from s3.

          The only other thing on the server besides that single page with the single line of code was an order form and my shopping cart.

          The server itself was a beefy rackspace server with nothing else on the server.

          Totally crashed that server within a minute or two of opening the promotion... took a hard reboot and about 35 minutes to bring it back up.

          Never got a really solid answer from rackspace about why it went down... but they told me it was too many simultaneous connections. When you drive a large spike of traffic to a server, there are all kinds of things that can cause a failure.


          - Jeff
          Yeah, Linux, last I knew, had hard limits of 32767 processes TOTAL, etc.... and Apache has like 1 server instance for each http(s) connection. And apparently mysql is the SAME way. and that doesn't even take into account CPU, MEMORY, etc.... It ALSO doesn't take into account client timeouts caused by latency that ALWAYS gets worse as you get more processes, and use more bandwidth.

          And the way MOST of the high impact launches have worked is THIS.....

          1. Visitor goes to referred page.
          2. HTTP starts a process that:
          2a. Stores referrer and some identifying and statistic info IN A DATABASE, through some script!
          2b. Displays a page which MAY be specific to the referrer.
          2c. THEN calls the video, etc... which may be on amazon.
          3. Then might do OTHER stuff on the http server!

          Any of those things can cause the server to crash.

          BTW regarding the 32767 limit? That is an OLD POSIX limit. They stored the process ID as a signed 2 byte number. I remember only like 15 or so years ago IBM patched AIX(THEIR UNIX system for their RS/6000 systems) to handle more processes. They actually had problems with the lower limit. OTHER companies hadn't updated THEIR system. Still, 32767 processes for a system IS a lot. Still, that may limit the number of potential connections for an HTTP page using a database to less than 8000, even if everything else could handle more.

          Steve
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      • Profile picture of the author jasonthewebmaster
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        Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

        Paul: Yes, I know quite a bit about this stuff. I also know quite a bit about marketers attempting to create a false sense of scarcity where there are obvious signs that one does not exist.

        Dude, you are right.. it's TOTALLY worth crashing your server just to create a false sense of scarcity!!

        I bet his sales went through the roof after that!!

        WHen i finally do a big launch, I think I will crash my own server LMAO that will totally work! I bet I will sell hundreds more!!!
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
    Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

    I'm not going to out the marketer that did this, but I just wanted to point out that if you're going to claim that your "server crashed" from all of the download activity your emails generated, don't let me get to your site and find out you're using Amazon S3 to host your files!

    Remember, if you treat your customers like idiots you'll have idiots for customers.
    Is this supposed to be ironic?

    ~M~
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  • Profile picture of the author seasoned
    BTW on my last job, I happened to be working with a group that worked on a LARGE(I think they said it was tens of terabytes, and apparently the largest database that database company has is about 10PB(1PB=1000TB)) HIGH availability database for a little company called AMAZON! They STILL spoke of problems they and Amazon had. GRANTED in the scheme of things, they were MINOR. They WON'T affect YOU, but it shows that THEY and AMAZON are ****NOT**** perfect.

    Crashes happen! They can happen at ANY time. HECK, amazon charges for some things, and they will INTENTIONALLY "crash" if they aren't paid, etc... I haven't seen the site in question, but I bet there were at least 4 points of possible failure.

    BTW if it was on amazon, and CAN'T crash, HOW did it crash?

    Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author Paul Myers
    Nope, no database involved here.
    No affiliates involved? Must have been one hell of a house list.

    I have a sneaking suspicion there's a lot more to the story than you know. And, unless you actually saw the site up when it was later claimed to have been down, you're making assumptions that don't deserve to be taken seriously.


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  • Profile picture of the author Mohammad Afaq
    Read this post by Jeff Walker here: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post1517921

    Your answer is in there.

    I think this topic has been talked to death about and it is a huge time waster.

    Some people do the whole fake server crash and some don't. Get over it.

    Why start a whole "conspiracy theory" thread here?

    Where I come from, they call it whining.

    EDIT: Oh and by the way, if my website is being hosted on a dedicated hostgator server but my files are on Amazon S3 (that is truly the way it is for me btw) my server CAN crash and you won't be able to access the download page OR THE sales page.

    So just because my files are hosted on Amazon S3 doesn't mean my server can't crash. And please don't tell me to host my website on S3 (I have heard this before) as Amazon S3 is not a webhost.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary King
    I hear ya...

    There's a lot of fake B.S.

    Not really sure you have enough info to call them out on it though bud.

    Even if you're the I.T. guru, and that's completely possible, so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, unless you were involved with THIS PARTICULAR hardware and software DURING the supposed "crash", ya really can't bust 'em.

    Weird stuff does actually happen.

    People do really lie too.

    FWIW, I share your frustration with false claims/scarcity/will only sell 3 of these but tell affiliates I've sold a zillion, etc...

    You just can't make the claim that this one particular incident was one of those false-hoods unless you are more involved than you've let on.

    Have a great day!

    Gary
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  • Profile picture of the author stealthpromo
    I want to hear more about fake server crashes. How do people initiate these?!
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    • Profile picture of the author jasonthewebmaster
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      Originally Posted by stealthpromo View Post

      I want to hear more about fake server crashes. How do people initiate these?!
      LOL

      easy, you just take your public_html directory and re-name it to public_html_crashed

      bam LOL
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      • Profile picture of the author Barry Unruh
        Originally Posted by jasonthewebmaster View Post

        LOL

        easy, you just take your public_html directory and re-name it to public_html_crashed

        bam LOL
        I'm lazy. If it was on a dedicated server I'd just initiate a restart remotely...

        As far as anyone would know it simply went down for a while.

        Barry

        P.S. With 20 years of IT Support under my belt I can tell you one thing for sure. A server which appears to be running perfectly under a light load is not necessarily going to stay up when you hit it with a heavy load.

        You change the memory usage profile, increase the heat of the CPU, stress the chipset, challenge the OS capability, and can even overwhelm a switch or router sitting one step away from the server. You cannot test these items unless you apply the same type of load you anticipate on launch.
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    • Profile picture of the author seasoned
      Originally Posted by stealthpromo View Post

      I want to hear more about fake server crashes. How do people initiate these?!
      The ONLY reason I could think of causing one is if you want to make it look like your site is POPULAR! It doesn't sound like a bright thing to do.

      Too many think servers can be made bulletproof. HECK, even BIG guys have trouble. I have had trouble even with GOOGLE! I mean trying from several systems on different networks that COULD access OTHER sites! PAYPAL has had problems! AMAZON has MULTIPLE servers! ****WHY****!?!?!?!? That seems like such a DUMB thing to do unless they determined they NEED them, or could use them.

      There are a LOT of things that could go wrong, and apache and IIS are FAR from perfect. THEY, and their progeny, control like 98% of the WORLDWIDE http(s) server market! They may actually kill processes just as they are allocated to a connection! That is one of the reasons why you may have to try to connect to a site twice before it connects. and MYSQL isn't perfect either. And ORACLE? Well, I just happen to be working at a LARGE place right now. One of the database systems they have is Oracle. The listener on one database hiccups like 1-3 times a day! You try it once and it loses the connection, try it again, and it works! HEY, I have seen this sort of thing a LOT!

      Steve
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  • Profile picture of the author jasonthewebmaster
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    Originally Posted by AllAboutAction View Post

    I'm not going to out the marketer that did this, but I just wanted to point out that if you're going to claim that your "server crashed" from all of the download activity your emails generated, don't let me get to your site and find out you're using Amazon S3 to host your files!

    Remember, if you treat your customers like idiots you'll have idiots for customers.
    LOL who says amazon was hosting his WHOLE site? You just said S3 was hosting the download files. What about the actual website?

    Chances are they were only hosting the video... meaning his server can still crash and bring down the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author celente
    server crashed

    2 products left

    hurry before we take this page down.

    This is the last copy left

    There is a fine line here...between straight out lying and using errr clever marketing tactics.

    I guess it is up to the individual. But whatever helps you sleep at night right?
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  • Profile picture of the author darkwizgemz
    Ironic it is. Thanks for the post.
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    • Profile picture of the author davezan
      Delete negative thread?
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      David

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      • Profile picture of the author seasoned
        Originally Posted by davezan View Post

        Delete negative thread?
        Frankly, too many seem to believe it is possible for a server to NEVER crash and that using such a server, EVEN IN PART, means your site won't crash. If this helps people to realize that servers DO crash, it should stay up. HECK, WARRIOR FORUM hasn't been up 100%! Crashes HAPPEN! Were the people the OP referred to lying? WHO KNOWS!?!?!? All I have to say is we may never know!

        Steve
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