Can I trust Xero and what else should I consider?

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#1915062 8-Dec-2017 09:39

DonGould:

I don't accept the suggestion by folk that 100% up time isn't possible and that I should accept a half day off line.

You'll never get 100% guaranteed up-time with anything, there's simply too many interconnecting components.

DonGould

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#1915480 8-Dec-2017 22:28

MurrayM:
DonGould:

I don't accept the suggestion by folk that 100% up time isn't possible and that I should accept a half day off line.

You'll never get 100% guaranteed up-time with anything, there's simply too many interconnecting components.

I think this thinking is just wrong.

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#1915486 8-Dec-2017 22:51

DonGould:
MurrayM:
DonGould:

I don't accept the suggestion by folk that 100% up time isn't possible and that I should accept a half day off line.

You'll never get 100% guaranteed up-time with anything, there's simply too many interconnecting components.

I think this thinking is just wrong.

100% is virtually impossible. And it’s absolutely not necessary for small business accounting. YOUR thinking is what is wrong.

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#1915842 9-Dec-2017 22:14

DonGould:
MurrayM:

DonGould: I don't accept the suggestion by folk that 100% up time isn't possible and that I should accept a half day off line.
You'll never get 100% guaranteed up-time with anything, there's simply too many interconnecting components.
I think this thinking is just wrong.

It's not that we want to accept mediocre products, but we are realistic.

As a network engineer, show me any equipment that has 100% uptime? You should know that you build all the redundancy into the hardware and one simple configuration or operator error can bring things crashing down. As stated before, do you really want to pay many multiples of $30 for your uptime?

If your answer to the last question is yes, then I would like to point out the law of diminishing returns.

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networkn

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#1915849 9-Dec-2017 23:04

DonGould:
MurrayM:

DonGould:

I don't accept the suggestion by folk that 100% up time isn't possible and that I should accept a half day off line.

You'll never get 100% guaranteed up-time with anything, there's simply too many interconnecting components.

I think this thinking is just wrong.

You would make a lot of money if you could offer 100% uptime on a product or service. There is a reason no company in the world offers (and delivers) 100% uptimes.

Your expectations are wildly off base.

DonGould

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#1916397 11-Dec-2017 09:46

The interesting thing about this thread is that no one came back and told me what Xero have actually done to mitigate a repeat of the problem that diminished my confidence.

Many have told me that I need to accept that problems happen, and I actually know that and do.

I also find the comment about the $30 a month 'token payment' interesting too. Xero isn't funded just by my part payment, it's funded by shareholder investment.

In my mind, a bunch of investors saw a need for the product to exist. While some were just buying shares to trade the value up and make a 'share trade profit', I suspect that others invested because they wanted to see the product concept actually come to exist.

Last time I looked, a billion dollars had been invested to build this product, hence why I was considering it.

You guys are right, my $30 is meaningless. But that billion dollars of investment is not.

I don't understand why the product isn't balanced across two or more data providers.

The suggestion that we can't have 100% update is just wrong. We can and we do.

We do that by having lots of cheap redundancy. You guys are harping on like it's possible for the internet to just vanish for a day because of redundancy issues, it's just not. Yes, parts of the internet vanish all the time, and then they come back.

As for accounting not being critical to my small business, I'm sorry but it is. It's just disruptive when you can't raise a simple invoice and purchase order when you want to. It causes people to call you and ask why, which just wastes your day.

In my mind, people like my parents invested some of their retirement income into projects like this because they facilitate business outcomes. Having built mobile technology that gives small business the ability to not be restrained to the workshop, the need to create invoices and manage your accounts from your phone became important. Hence they give capital to companies like this to build solutions.

Finally I do agree that uptime costs money. I have 100% computing uptake and that costs me at least ten to 50 times what it costs my friends who only have 1 computing device in their homes which they share. But 50 times the cost of their $100 dollar investment is $5,000. I run my businesses on computers and to suggest that $5,000 in capital is unaffordable is just silly.

I don't expect that I'm going to ever get 100% uptime out of Xero or any other cloud solution if my only investment is a $20 second hand mobile phone on a single budget network.

My take away message from this is 'expect outages with cloud based solutions and consider something else for your needs'.

Thanks for your help guys :)

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#1916401 11-Dec-2017 09:52

I am honestly shaking my head, lost for words, but sadly unsurprised.

DonGould

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#1916428 11-Dec-2017 10:08

networkn:

I am honestly shaking my head, lost for words, but sadly unsurprised.

Why?

This is the thinking that results in the likes of AWS going off line for half a day and dumping billion dollar projects.

What staggers me is that a bunch of you guys think this is ok.

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#1916429 11-Dec-2017 10:10

Re-Read what you wrote, it should be pretty obvious after that.

No-one has said it's ok, what everyone (a lot who are experienced professionals working in the field) is that 100% isn't possible.

If you can provide a 100% uptime service, you will be rich.

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#1916456 11-Dec-2017 10:29

Hey DonGould, out of curiosity, which Electricity provider or Network in NZ did you find (and decide to use) that provides 100% uptime for your business? Did you at your own cost need to invest in a UPS in addition to Solar so that you could ensure business uptime?

Oh wait, it doesn't matter because of external factors. There's always the weather, and, heaven forbid, terrible drivers on the road who could take out the grid at any point in time. There's always the chance that your UPS will fail, or the sun wasn't out. Nothing is 100%.

Exactly the same concept with software and infrastructure.

networkn

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#1916459 11-Dec-2017 10:34

Also, what brand is your computer, it must also have 100% uptime, no hardware failures, or a 100% seamless transition to a second bit of hardware.

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#1916545 11-Dec-2017 11:18

DonGould:

The interesting thing about this thread is that no one came back and told me what Xero have actually done to mitigate a repeat of the problem that diminished my confidence.

Well, you didn't ask Xero. They might not tell you due to commercial sensitivity.

There's no "cheap redundancy" with AWS. I went to a public presentation Xero did a while back, they have a LOT of servers. Duplicating the infrastructure and storage in another region doubles their cost. AWS isn't cheap. There are cheaper ways of providing redundancy, but even with servers turned off there are significant data storage costs.

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#1916546 11-Dec-2017 11:18

I used to work at Xero, in IT operations for almost six years (DevOps; wonder if my build system has been replaced yet) but wasn't involved in the AWS project, which was in progress when I left.

I was going to write a bunch of stuff but they've done a better job (and I don't know how things are internally now anyway): https://www.xero.com/nz/about/security/

Disaster recovery and readiness

Xero performs real-time data replication between our geographically diverse, protected facilities, to ensure your data is available and safely stored. This means that should even an unlikely event occur, such as an entire hosting facility failure, we can switch over quickly to a backup site to keep Xero and your business running. We transmit data securely, across encrypted links.

Having worked there, that sounds like a true and accurate statement to me. I'm sure both AWS and Xero have learned from the problem with S3.

The advantage with going with someone as big as Xero is they have some top notch people building and maintaining these systems, spread across multiple timezones. So when things go wrong, they get fixed quickly, lessons are learned and applied, etc.

networkn

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#1916547 11-Dec-2017 11:19

timmmay:

DonGould:

The interesting thing about this thread is that no one came back and told me what Xero have actually done to mitigate a repeat of the problem that diminished my confidence.

Well, you didn't ask Xero. They might not tell you due to commercial sensitivity.

There's no "cheap redundancy" with AWS. I went to a public presentation Xero did a while back, they have a LOT of servers. Duplicating the infrastructure and storage in another region doubles their cost. AWS isn't cheap. There are cheaper ways of providing redundancy, but even with servers turned off there are significant data storage costs.

Honestly, you are wasting your breath :)

DonGould

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#1916574 11-Dec-2017 11:47

premiumtouring:

Hey DonGould, out of curiosity, which Electricity provider or Network in NZ did you find (and decide to use) that provides 100% uptime for your business? Did you at your own cost need to invest in a UPS in addition to Solar so that you could ensure business uptime?

Oh wait, it doesn't matter because of external factors. There's always the weather, and, heaven forbid, terrible drivers on the road who could take out the grid at any point in time. There's always the chance that your UPS will fail, or the sun wasn't out. Nothing is 100%.

Exactly the same concept with software and infrastructure.

Orian is the lines company. I have 3 phase on a dual feed diverse path, which explains why it hardly ever goes out. I have two redundant UPS, a 5KVA with a fresh battery set and a 3KVA with an additional battery set providing A and B side power to my systems. Additionally I have a generator point so we can give the UPS power fairly quickly if required.

I'm currently in the process of starting the solar project because it will cost us less to cool our space when the sun is shining.

Additionally I have fibre and VDSL across two different diverse networks with OSPF and BGP running and I look time to understand the UFB installation paths so we could understand diversity.

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