Category Archives: Uncategorized

High number of bot traffic causing sites to not respond

We are currently experiencing a high number of bot traffic affecting customers on the cluster “galaxy01”. This will result in some sites not being able to display or function. We are working on getting this resolve and will continue to update the status of this issue here.

If you have any questions, please submit a ticket via your my.pressable.com control panel.

Update 12:58 P.M.- We are continuing to investigate the issue causing some sites on different clusters that are getting 502 errors. If you have any questions please submit a ticket in your my.pressable.com control panel.

UPDATE 3:05PM CST: At this time we’ve seen stability across the systems for the last 90 minutes. We’re still continuing our investigation into the cause of these issues, but wanted to let you know some normalcy has returned. Our apologies for the issues this week.

 

RESOLVED: Network Connectivity Issues Impacting Availability

We’re currently experiencing an issue impacting our edge devices that’s causing sites and internal systems to be inaccessible. We’re investigating with our provider and will provide an update when we have more information.

UPDATE 10:20PM CST: Our provider is investigating the issue and believes it may be related to a DDOS attack against another customer of theirs which is saturating the internal networks at the datacenter. We’re continuing to work with our partners to restore services ASAP.

UPDATE 10:30PM CST: Our provider is informing us that the attack appears to have subsided for the time being. At this time our systems are beginning to return to normal and we’re continuing to monitor for any lingering issues.

UPDATE 10:50PM CST: At this time we’re seeing our systems operating at normal levels. We’ll continue to monitor for issues, but do not expect there to be any problems related to this incident.

Service Availability Issue on Galaxy01

We’re currently experiencing an issue with a cluster named “Galaxy01” that’s causing high load across the system which results in sites being down or displaying 502 error messages. We’re investigating the root cause of this issue and will provide an updates as we have them.

UPDATE 11:15AM CST: We’re continuing to investigate issues causing higher than normal load on the systems. We’re also working to bring new hardware online which we believe may help to alleviate some issues.

UPDATE 12:25PM CST: We’re currently in the process of bringing the new hardware online which is causing some downtime while it starts taking traffic. We apologize for the issue and expect the new hardware to be 100% functional shortly.

UPDATE 1:00PM CST: The new hardware is online and we’re starting to see usage return to normal. We’ll provide an update when things are more stable on the systems.

UPDATE 3:25PM CST: We’ve seen stability in the systems for the past hour and are continuing to monitor systems. If you notice any issues, please let us know.

Botnet Attack Causing Issues Across Network

Howdy,

Our servers are currently under attack and this has caused some of our databases to run behind and result in sites not displaying, updating, or functioning properly.

We have already begun banning IPs before they hit out load balancers and are working toward reducing the impact and footprint of this.

We will update the status blog again once this attack has subsided.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact our helpdesk via your panel at  https://my.pressable.com.

Thank you!

UPDATE – 01/05/2015 @ 11:56AM Central: 

We are seeing the slave database servers as caught up and sites should be functioning properly now. If you are still experiencing issues, please contact us via https://my.pressable.com

UPDATE – 01/05/2015 @ 12:25AM Central: 

The slave databases have fallen behind again and we are attempting to get them caught back up. Although they had originally caught back up, they are now behind once more and you may be experiencing some issues (logging in to your site, content updates not display, etc.). We will update once we have seen sustained stability and synchronization on these database servers.

Please let me know if you have any questions, thanks!

Thanksgiving Holiday Support Hours

Howdy,

2014 has nearly run its course and the holiday season is upon us. The Pressable staff wants to thank everyone for supporting us through this year and helping us find new ways to improve our services.

In observance of the holiday on November 27th, 2014, we will have a reduced support staff on hand and will be operating with minimal support response on both November 27th and 28th. We will resume operating under normal support hours on November 29th, 2014.

Minimal Support Response means that we won’t be available to respond to non-emergency requests. There will be support staff standing by, but we use our best judgement to determine emergency issues that need our attention immediately.

We hope everyone enjoys their holiday and look forward to serving you through the rest of the year.

Thank you!

Resolved – Chicago DC – Unscheduled Maintenance October 25th 2014

Due to a miscommunication between us and our service provider Rackspace, the majority of websites hosted at our Chicago datacenter are offline.  We are on the phone with Rackspace working to restore the servers that are needed to bring these websites online as quickly as possible. 

As of Saturday October 25th 8:31AM. All services are running properly.

POODLE SSL Vulnerability

We are aware of the recently announced vulnerability in SSL called POODLE. This vulnerability affects a very small percentage of traffic on our systems.

You can read more about this vulnerability at the following links:

https://isc.sans.edu/diary/OpenSSL%3A+SSLv3+POODLE+Vulnerability+Official+Release/18827

Click to access ssl-poodle.pdf

The “fix” for this issue is to disable SSLv3 on servers and/or clients that utilize it. Fortunately, it is in use in a very small percentage of traffic and is not likely to hinder traffic to sites we host in any significant capacity.

The recommended solution to this problem will make clients using Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows XP or older recieve an SSL error.

Currently, this fix will also break the Pingdom monitoring service SSL check. Pingdom is aware of this issue and is making the appropriate changes to their systems.

We are aware of the inconvenience this may cause, but we believe that this is the right thing to do.

You can see larger providers implement similar policies here.

https://chargify.com/blog/dropping-sslv3/
https://blog.cloudflare.com/sslv3-support-disabled-by-default-due-to-vulnerability/

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our help desk by submitting a ticket from https://my.pressable.com.

Slave Databases Running Behind

Howdy,

We are currently experiencing an issues with our slave database servers that is causing some sites in our network to serve stale content. We are aware of these issues and are working toward resolving them now.

This is not currently causing sites to be unavailable, just serve old content in some cases.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact our help desk by submitting a ticket via your https://my.pressable.com control panel.

Slider Revolution Plugin Security Vulnerability

IMPORTANT: Sucuri has released details on an exploit for the plugin Slider Revolution Responsive WordPress Plugin. Details of the exploit can be seen on Sucuri’s blog.

IF YOU ARE USING THIS PLUGIN, PLEASE UPDATE TO THE LATEST VERSION IMMEDIATELY.

Our team is working on a way to block these attacks, but we can NOT update this plugin on sites as it’s not freely available on the WordPress.org repository.

RESOLVED: Service Interruption

We’re currently investigating an issue with site availability and system stability. We’ll provide an update as we have more details.

UPDATE 12:55PM CST: The team has identified an issue with one of the database servers and is currently evaluating the system.

UPDATE 1:20PM CST: The team is currently looking at an issue with one of the physical drives in the database server.

UPDATE 2:00PM CST: At this time we’ve restored basic services to sites. The team is still working to get the database servers back to 100%, but sites should be operational.

NOTICE: For the next several hours some of the database slaves will be serving stale data. This will occur while our team works to bring up new slave database servers. If you’re having issues with new content not showing up on your site, this is why. If you’re working to publish new content, and having problems, please contact help@pressable.com and our team can assist.

UPDATE 5:00PM CST: Our team is investigating load issues from the earlier database problems. This is causing sites to be down and unresponsive.

UPDATE 10:00PM CST: Site stability has returned, however, we’re still waiting for the database system to return to 100%.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: For the next several hours some of the database slaves will be serving stale data. This will occur while our team works to bring up new slave database servers. If you’re having issues with new content not showing up on your site, this is why. If you’re working to publish new content, and having problems, please contact help@pressable.com and our team can assist.

UPDATE 8/10/14 7:50AM: We’re still working to get the databases servers back to 100%. During this time database slaves will be serving stale data. This will occur while our team works to bring up new slave database servers. If you’re having issues with new content not showing up on your site, plugin changes not saving, or comments not posting it’s related to this issue. If you need to publish new content or make updates, please contact help@pressable.com and our team can assist.

UPDATE 8/10/14 12:33 PM: We are continuing to work on the database servers. During this time, we have put some changes into place on our Thor cluster that will help improve stability and performance. You may experience a 502 during this time and this will clear once all changes have been finalized. Please contact us through my.pressable.com if you have questions or concerns.

UPDATE 8/10/14 4:25PM: Just as a reminder, we’re not out of the woods with the database issues. We’re still working to get back to 100% and are dealing with stale data and sites not updating. If you’re having issues with new content not showing up on your site, plugin changes not saving, or comments not posting it’s related to this issue. If you need to publish new content or make updates, please contact help@pressable.com and our team can assist.

UPDATE 8/10/14 6:00PM: We’re still working to get back to 100% and are dealing with stale data and sites not updating. If you’re having issues with new content not showing up on your site, plugin changes not saving, or comments not posting it’s related to this issue. If you need to publish new content or make updates, please contact help@pressable.com and our team can assist.

UPDATE 8/10/14 7:20PM: At this time we’ve restored two new database slaves and put them in place for all customers. We’re continuing to monitor the database servers and make sure that things work properly, but early signs are positive. If you’re still having issues, please email help@pressable.com and we’ll take a look.

UPDATE 8/11/14 8:55AM: Overnight we noticed that one of the new servers we put in place wasn’t able to keep up with the demand of traffic. This caused momentary issues where it would serve stale data while other servers would serve the latest data. We’ve now replaced this machine and stability has returned to the systems. If you’re still having issues, please email help@pressable.com and we’ll take a look.