Image Uploading Update

auctivakevinkVP Engineering

I wanted to update all of you on what we're currently doing with our image servers.

We're in the process of moving 100% of your Auctiva hosted images to new hardware. Given the huge volume of images that we have, this is not a quick task and unfortunately the moving of images actually puts an additional strain on the existing old image servers. We're carefully monitoring things and we slow down the moving of images when the servers start reaching serving capacity.

With the new hardware, we have nearly an infinate amount of space and serving capacity to grow into. We will also have the older servers still in place with backup images which gives us protection in the rare case our new hardware breaks down.

This moves us in a very positive direction for the long term success of image hosting for Auctiva. Please bare with us during the next couple of weeks while we do transition to the new hardware. There is no planned downtime, but uploading and displaying of images may be a bit slower than normal during this time.

Thanks,

-Kevin

4/3/0710:43 AM

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Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

roamerMember

I don't really like the fact that I didn't find out about this transition until I had a problem. I would have really appreciated a heads up. I have signed up to receive emails from auctiva, why couldn't someone have sent one out concerning this planned move?? Not everyone checks this message board every single day. I realize there are a very few users who sit at the computer all day and post on every topic in hopes of increasing their own sales, but most of us have more pressing concerns.

4/4/076:09 AM

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danyelle6974Member

A simple warning message on the homepage would have been fine. But I didn't know about this until I tried uploading photos. A couple of weeks is a couple of weeks earnings for me. Will it be totally down for two weeks, intermittant or what? Thanks.

4/4/076:12 AM

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dannoMember

Since there was "no planned downtime", I'm guessing this outage is not part of the transition. It seems to be 100%, as I'm checking other Auctiva sellers and nada....

Is anyone from Auctiva around????

Danno

4/4/076:15 AM

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crabbyMember

Me too, y'all... there's not enuf time to read the Community boards! We definitely should've had some other, better form of advance notification! I would've used an alternate site & avoided this stress & raised blood pressure not the mention the permanent frown that is beginning to form in my forehead!

dleck...i surveyed earlier & found about 3/4 user's images on eBay were down....I assume preference & whatever service is available is given to paying members.

4/4/076:16 AM

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danyelle6974Member

OK all now gone. First the newer images disappeared now even my oldest images have gone. I'm running 600 listings and no pics whatsoever. When are they coming back auctiva?

4/4/076:17 AM

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sadeMember

I have no images.

4/4/076:25 AM

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mutantfrogloverMember

Yes, please let us know how much of the few weeks will have this issue! This is the bread and butter for many of us, and I'm sure we would all like the opportunity to find other means of photo storage in the interim of this process. I typically love Auctiva, but we all need to know what we need to do.
Thanks,
Melissa

4/4/076:25 AM

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mattbMember

The scary thing is that this initial post is getting close to 24 hours ago!!! I've been through this before with Auctiva. This could be a very bad day...couple days...week...

Looks like eBay is gonna make a little added money from me for RELISTING items that don't sell today due to X'd images!! Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

I don't know if it's possible. But during issues like this it would be GREAT if a little scrolling note would appear in all effected auctions ( like the scrolling of our other auctions' photos )..."Sorry images are not available currently, they should be back up soon...thank you for your patience"!! That would at least let potential buyers know that we're not clueless...that we know there's a problem.

4/4/076:30 AM

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marhr (Guest)

Yeah this is just great that you learn about this after you post a bunch of items that eBay will bill you for posting. Of course no sales will happen when you can't even see a picture. There should be at least a weeks notice for something that will destroy sales. As inconvenient as it is, it would be easier to swallow if we weren't charged listing fees for items that won't sell. I just listed yesterday so I don't expect any activity at all. Auctiva...you need to work on communication.

4/4/076:38 AM

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heathersangelsMember

I would like to say GOOD MORNING to everyone even though I see you are having the same issue as me.
I see some of you have been thru this before and I was wondering are the pictures gone forever or Will they eventually come back up?

Thanks for the support.

4/4/076:47 AM

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raggedymeMember

We all know there are times when "stuff" happens. Seeing that this was a planned move, this is not one of those times.

Why not give us the common courtesy of letting us know in advance? I, as well as the majority of Auctiva users are signed up to receive messages. It would be easier on all concerned if Auctiva would use that option by sending an email to its users when a move like this is going to happen.

4/4/076:49 AM

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roamerMember

I put in a support request and was told it is a problem with one of the servers and the "engineers" are working on it. No mention any move to new servers. Does the left hand not know what the right does??

4/4/076:54 AM

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suthrnjewlMember

Heathers Angels..

As one who has been through this before when Auctiva has switched/moved servers...it works out. If it didn't...I'd have been gone long ago.

The pics aren't gone forever and they will come back once the server is kicked. (JOKE, they don't actually kick it)

Instead of paying eBay more for housing your pics....I suggest opening a free photobucket account and store your pictures there and use the Other image hosting on the template to put your picture url. It works. Or for those with their own host space...upload your pics to the hosting and then use the url.

The notice I received from help did state the image servers...I'm sorry your didn't.

Best of Luck...I'm outta here for the day.
Donna

4/4/077:18 AM

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jessieMember

does anyone know when these will be back? i have auctions ending tonight, some i'll probably just add photobucket pics too just in case

4/4/077:25 AM

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roamerMember

What is really weird is that on my ebay listings that I posted last night, even the gallery photo is blank, although if I pull up an "items for sale" list, it is there. Also, the store scroll is working and has photos, but when I post here, my own little posting photo is gone, unlike others. Anyway, I've been thinking about doing things differently and this just gave me the "kick in the server" that I needed!

4/4/077:25 AM

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beautywizardMember

Auctiva used to send out a warning if they knew that there would be an image issue. Did Auctiva know? Images are so important to make the most of an ebay selling experience. Auctiva should be more sensitive to the service they provide registered members. Please let us know when the image issue is expected to be resolved. Also, I am still getting my Auctiva Verification Emails about 1 week late. Auctiva told me a week ago that this issue was being fixed. When is that supposed to take place?

4/4/077:34 AM

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netpetMember

OK, but are the pictures going to be gone for hours, days, weeks or what? Can someone out there please let us know. I listed a ton of stuff yesterday in the hopes I could spark a few sales and am wondering if I should go and edit them all. Some real information would sure help us.

4/4/077:51 AM

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suthrnjewlMember

Roamer...that is weird on the gallery.
EBAY hosts the gallery pic that's viewed on eBay.

Dump your cache? history? temp files? Reboot?See if that works.

Now I'm REALLY outta here...or I'm going to be late.

Good Luck all,
Donna

4/4/077:52 AM

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elishanMember

WHY ISN'T THERE A FLASHING RED ALERT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

everytime they expect heavy listing they have the flashing alert to plan ahead. a warning that this was going to happen would have majorly been appreciated. tons in the community have hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on auctiva. i'm with the voice of the masses, we could have dealt with the problem a whole lot easier if there was a warning of what was to come.

would highly appreciate a heads up on when we can expect final results & our pics to be back

4/4/078:01 AM

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aegissalesMember

With 800+ listings it would have been nice to know we were changing servers and that this might happen.

4/4/078:28 AM

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beautywizardMember

Your explanation is not detailed enough. First of all are you saying that this situation of no images in the listings will be ongoing for WEEKS? Does this mean we need to list using Ebay until you say you have no more imaging problems? PLEASE CLARIFY! If I had known you were going to have imaging issues I would have just listed using EBAY to avoid these problems that are absolutely hurting my sales. This is counterproductive and counter to the service you provide. Someone royally stuffed up!

4/4/078:39 AM

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alMember

Mine are up now ...

4/4/079:00 AM

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jessieMember

mine too, yippeee!!! i was contemplating cancelling all the listings with bidders that were ending tonight...phew! that was a close one, auctiva

4/4/079:13 AM

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heathersangelsMember

Thank you Donna for the help. It is truly appreciated.

Blessings,
Heather

4/4/079:16 AM

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elishanMember

my pictures are back as well.

should we expect this to happen frequently, or even again, in the next couple of weeks?

some information about the situation would be well appreciated.
thanks in advance

4/4/079:26 AM

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auctivakevinkVP Engineering

The downtime this morning did not have anything to do with the moving of images I mentioned at the top of this thread.

This is the reason we are moving, because the existing file servers are not able to handle the volume we are asking them to handle for serving images.

I appologize for the downtime this morning. As soon as our support team found out the problem, they called the emergency number we have for IT support. It did take a bit for the on-call IT person to fix the problem, but it was resolved and images were back to normal.

Again, this does not have anything to do with what I've mentioned about having 2 weeks of transition time to move to the new hardware. We will continue to monitor the existing file servers to make sure that they stay up and we don't have repeated issues like this morning.

Sorry again for the confusion and more importantly the downtime of images this morning.

-Kevin

4/4/0710:09 AM

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roamerMember

Would it help if everyone would delete images they no longer use? It's a chore but I do it frequently.

4/4/0710:14 AM

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auctivakevinkVP Engineering

Deleting images you no longer use is always helpful to us.

At some point we'll be adding a feature that will allow you to delete images that have not been used in X (i.e. 60 days) amount of time. Hopefully that will help people clean out images quickly.

-Kevin

4/4/0710:20 AM

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crabbyMember

Roamer--as I recall from several months ago, users offered to do this (remove unnecessary clutter), but Auctiva said it wouldn't help & that the new (?) Hercules (?) servers would handle everything we could load it with & THEN some....and that they had like ONE NANO SECOND of outtage every 10 years... or something along those lines..... I guess not, huh?

Oh, well, sour grapes here. In my haste, I added the WRONG freakin pics to the bottom of an auction with a bid on it, had to cancel the whole dogdam thing & Relist it. It's not often that I even GET a flippin bid & there I go having to CANCEL the whole friken fraken auction!

geez. watta mess.

4/4/0710:24 AM

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biscuitMember

quote:
Originally posted by crabby:
Roamer--as I recall from several months ago, users offered to do this (remove unnecessary clutter), but Auctiva said it wouldn't help

I've been here since August of '05, and have seen this question come up many times. I can't recall a time when Auctiva support said that deleting old images was not helpful...

4/4/0710:54 AM

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crabbyMember

Makes sense that it would help biscuit....

I was thinking of a thread about this time last year--maybe July because I had been a member for 9 months before the problem occurred....

& if I recall, it was Todd or Jeff who was addressing the issue... Now that I think about it, it could have been that the transition to bigger, better servers was already underway, hence, they said don't bother......?

I do try to delete as often as possible--wouldn't it be nice if it were a less-cumbersome chore tho?

i.e..... I have about 25 folders....when I got into a folder, tick off the ones to delete, hit DELETE, the new page that pops up has reverted back to page one of ALL FOLDERS again, so I have to pull up the particular folder I had been working on over & over again.

oh, yeah.... as suggested by previous poster....

FLASHING RED ALERT BANNER gets my vote!

4/4/0711:10 AM