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Celebrity Taking On Line System Off Line

CHEZMARYLOU

By CHEZMARYLOU,
in Celebrity Cruises

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CHEZMARYLOU

CHEZMARYLOU

Posted
Posted

From Celebrity's web site:

 

=== Reservation System Outage ===

In an abundance of caution, due to Hurricane Irma, we will be taking our reservations system offline to avoid any potential issues as the storm passes over our facilities in South Florida. Our website and reservation system will be unavailable from Saturday, 09/9/17, at Midnight EST, and restored by Tuesday, 9/12. We are hopeful that systems will be restored late on Sunday once the storm has passed. This down-time will impact all system tasks, including the creation of a new booking or servicing of an existing booking.

Unfortunately, this down time affects both our online activity, as well as our phone agents. In addition, other services such as online check-in, will also be unavailable during this period. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Our teams are working hard to ensure that this pause in service is as short as possible. Please be advised that if you have a deposit or payment due for your upcoming cruise vacation during this down time, your payment is now due by Tuesday 9/12. Otherwise, we anticipate our systems to be back on line by this Tuesday, 9/12.

For status updates on upcoming sailings, please visit Celebrity Cruises Facebook Page

We thank you for choosing Celebrity and for your patience and understanding.

 

The beautiful Celebrity Solstice

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Mynki

Mynki

Posted
Posted

Having worked in IT for a global bank for 18 years with a long spell in disaster recovery I'm left thinking why on earth a company the size of RCCL doesn't have a mirrored site and isn't prepared for something like this. Their head of IT wants firing.

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Jeremiah1212

Jeremiah1212

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Having worked in IT for a global bank for 18 years with a long spell in disaster recovery I'm left thinking why on earth a company the size of RCCL doesn't have a mirrored site and isn't prepared for something like this. Their head of IT wants firing.

 

I don't normally participate in the website complaint threads...but yes, this one is a bit odd. You'd expect it from a small company, but this is just common sense?!?

 

The only other reason is they don't have the staff available to maintain any sense of business continuity so it's easier to do a complete shut down of operations than try to operate on a skeleton staff.

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Mynki

Mynki

Posted
Posted
I don't normally participate in the website complaint threads...but yes, this one is a bit odd. You'd expect it from a small company, but this is just common sense?!?

 

The only other reason is they don't have the staff available to maintain any sense of business continuity so it's easier to do a complete shut down of operations than try to operate on a skeleton staff.

 

I don't think my post is a complaint, more an observation. But I am amazed that a large corporate the size of RCCL is doing this. They could run with a dark site and simply send the required staff there as and when needed just as written in disaster recovery plans belonging to other corporate's around the world!

 

If similar happened at my ex employer, heads would have rolled without a doubt.

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mmacdcc

mmacdcc

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That makes no sense. Their system should be cloud based, mirrored, and distributed. They have agents in other places than Miami as well.

 

I could see saying it might be slow, or that call wait times would be longer than normal.

 

Unless they're expecting a huge influx of site traffic - but even so, they have ships all over the world, going to ports that have nothing to do with the Caribbean, and customers who have nothing to do with the US at all.

 

RCI as well. I really don't understand.

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realnice46

realnice46

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With Celebrity's track record with their site, my worry is that it won't be up and running by Tuesday or anytime soon after that.

 

My biggest worry is for the safety of the poor people in Florida. the recoveries from the past hurricanes in NJ, New Orleans etc. are still trying to recover.

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Jade13

Jade13

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Our agent emailed yesterday that final payment due today would be paid on Tuesday due to the office closing.

 

I also do not understand why the site is not set up for disaster recovery. It should never have been in a position where it needed to be shut down. This sounds like their only server is in Miami.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

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gentlemancruiser

gentlemancruiser

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RCCL is bringing the site down to prevent possible damage. The site hosting their site may be at risk of power failure and data loss so to avoid damaging the site they bring it down. It could the that servers that run it or host it could be impacted. My company does this with some of our system to avoid damage.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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mmacdcc

mmacdcc

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RCCL is bringing the site down to prevent possible damage. The site hosting their site may be at risk of power failure and data loss so to avoid damaging the site they bring it down.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I understand that. But that just points up how incompetent their IT dept is. They're a huge company that does business all over the world, with ships in many places other than the Caribbean.

 

Then they need another hosting company. And to not host it themselves. That's exactly why you DON'T host it yourself, and use a cloud based, mirrored, company. It's basic disaster recovery stuff, and especially for a large, worldwide, operation.

 

I can't imagine a worldwide bank shutting down the entire operation because of a hurricane in ONE location.

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travelplus

travelplus

Posted
Posted (edited)
Having worked in IT for a global bank for 18 years with a long spell in disaster recovery I'm left thinking why on earth a company the size of RCCL doesn't have a mirrored site and isn't prepared for something like this. Their head of IT wants firing.

 

Even better operate a reservations center in San Jose CA or Albuquerque New Mexico with a mirrored website and VOIP phones.

 

Even as a kid I knew about website mirroring and those old tape backup systems.

 

I love redundancy have two other centers one in Albuquerque and one in San Jose CA and a third party data cloud that can all come online if one goes down the next center takes over etc.

 

Even I have redundancy at home with a 2 TB external hard drive and a 2 TB Netowork Accessible Hard Drive and even a thumb USB drive. I have automated backup and even have a Cloud Storage if I need and it all backup automatically.

 

If god forbid there were a natural disaster all I do is take my VOIP phone that plugs into my laptop and activate the call forwarding to the VOIP phone and I am back in business. I could even take over operations of Royal Caribbean if I have the proper credentials and have phones forwarded to a different number.

 

So if you call 1800-xxx-xxx it call forwards to 408-xxx-xxx-xxx and the PBX system would work. All you need are the messages that the IT would activae so when you call the main 1800 number of Royal and its gets forwarded to the new center all the phone tree is ready to go. Two days before the storm the operations center(which functions as a reservations center during other times) begins their 24/7 transfer process and then everything else comes online over time.

 

All a VOIP number is a virtual number that can be answered in Rome, Paris, New York or San Francisco and can be forwarded to a landline anywhere.

 

In a dire emrgency like a power outage in Miami there could be a quick method to bring everything online.

Edited by travelplus
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travelplus

travelplus

Posted
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Our agent emailed yesterday that final payment due today would be paid on Tuesday due to the office closing.

 

I also do not understand why the site is not set up for disaster recovery. It should never have been in a position where it needed to be shut down. This sounds like their only server is in Miami.

 

Bingo! And if so that would be a major problem. Lets say they lost everything including reservations made for months or a year or two out, lost critical data etc,

 

Its a problem and there needs to be redundancy.

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kimlovesfl

kimlovesfl

Posted
Posted
That makes no sense. Their system should be cloud based, mirrored, and distributed. They have agents in other places than Miami as well.

 

I could see saying it might be slow, or that call wait times would be longer than normal.

 

Unless they're expecting a huge influx of site traffic - but even so, they have ships all over the world, going to ports that have nothing to do with the Caribbean, and customers who have nothing to do with the US at all.

 

RCI as well. I really don't understand.

 

But some people who are taking those cruises in other areas, like the Med, live in Florida and are impacted by this. So, if I have to change my Choice Air flight reservation before Tuesday, I'm screwed? I called them Friday, and I'm pretty sure at least that call center is in India. I know nothing about web hosting and IT, and I can understand them wanting their Florida based staff to not be at work, but no 2nd location? I worked for a decent-sized tour wholesaler, with their main office in Milwaukee, an office in Orlando, and an office in Colorado. Weather or other issues that affected one call center meant the calls were routed elsewhere.

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cruisefam38

cruisefam38

Posted
Posted

On his blog, Freakonomics, Fred Shapiro wrote:

Charles Doyle of the University of Georgia, my coauthor on the forthcoming Yale Book of Modern Proverbs, has found that this expression is now commonly applied to economic or diplomatic crises that can be exploited to advance political agendas, but he traced it back at least as far as 1976, when M. F. Weiner wrote an article in the journal Medical Economics entitled “Don’t Waste a Crisis — Your Patient’s or Your Own.” Weiner meant by this that a medical crisis can be used to improve aspects of personality, mental health, or lifestyle.

 

Is it possible, RCCL/Celebrity can use this storm related interruption in normal business to shut down the Celebrity website to make the much needed adjustments, fixes, and re-programming?

 

Also, I enjoyed caribill's witty observation.

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varoo

varoo

Posted
Posted (edited)

Well, it seems that the Celebrity website is now working better than ever today, at least for making payments.

 

I just made an online payment, and the whole thing took less than 2 minutes, smoothly without a single glitch, from beginning to end.

 

I then checked the reservation in my account, and it had already been updated correctly.

Upon logging into my email, my updated Guest Copy of the confirmation invoice was already there waiting for me.

 

The whole thing could not have been any easier.

Hope it is now working as well for everyone else.

 

 

Since I am one who has complained about the Celebrity website many times, I think it is only fair also to post when something goes well.

Edited by varoo
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Luvcrusn

Luvcrusn

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Posted
Well, it seems that the Celebrity website is now working better than ever today, at least for making payments.

 

I just made an online payment, and the whole thing took less than 2 minutes, smoothly without a single glitch, from beginning to end.

 

I then checked the reservation in my account, and it had already been updated correctly.

Upon logging into my email, my updated Guest Copy of the confirmation invoice was already there waiting for me.

 

The whole thing could not have been any easier.

Hope it is now working as well for everyone else.

Thanks for the good wishes. My November cruise, paid in full and check in 100% complete still won't let me purchase transportation, hotel or transfers until I "complete my booking," but I'll be darned if I or anyone at Celebrity can figure out what is missing. The cruise is still leaving from "USA". It might help to be a bit more specific...east coast or west coast!

 

Sent from my SM-G930V using Forums mobile app

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