Data Centre Outage Causes Drama For Theatre Ticket Seller

Ben Sullivan,

Data centres: “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” Rack’s faulty network switch knocks out theatre ticketing system provider

Data centres and thespians – worlds apart. One exists solely out of the limelight like a stage prop designer forever dismissed by theatre goers who never read beyond the cast list in the show’s programme. The other, forced front of stage to bare all to the critical public. Both are, however, vital.

This morning those two worlds collided, causing moderate mayhem for theatre goers and gig punters alike.

Fans trying to buy tickets online for such shows as Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (it’s fantastic) in London’s Jack Studio Theatre were stopped in their tracks by an outage on ticket buying site Ticketsource.co.uk, which blames a fault in a data centre for the chaos.

TicketSource, which also provides a free online ticketing system for venues, cited connectivity issues from its side of things.

“We’re aware of a connectivity issue affecting some TicketSource users. Our data centre is currently investigating. Thanks for your patience,” first chimed the website’s Twitter account.

Matters only got worse when Twitter user Rhiannon Payne was left unable to purchase her tickets for the circus.

ticketsource1

“We understand it was a faulty network switch on our rack which our data centre partners have swapped out, resolving the issue,” a TicketSource social media manager told yours truly on its Facebook page.

Wiltshire-based Sheer Music was none too pleased either, letting TicketSource know that it should indeed be stressing.

“I’m patient as hell. The world won’t stop, you do what you can, so stress,” wrote Sheer Music’s Twitter account.

TicketSource was unable to disclose its data centre hosting partner, but what we do know is that normal service has been resumed.

“Our partners have resolved the issue at the data centre. We are now back up and running as normal. We thank you for your patience during the short outage experienced this morning.”

A short customer testimonial on Midlands-based data centre provider VeloxServ, which operates racks near Birmingham, shows that it counts TicketSource as a customer. VeloxServ has not responded to TechWeekEurope’s request for comment at the time of publishing.

This isn’t TicketSource’s fault, of course. But it proves that nowadays no online business, no matter what type of business you’re in, can escape the wrath of outage, and that SLAs are a crucial part of any plan you have with an ISP or hosting provider.

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