How Not To Build a Highly Available Web Site

Here's what I just got when I went to http://www.technetmagazine.com:

Here's the kicker: it's not TechNet Magazine that is down, nor even TechNet. It is Microsoft Live Sign-in, nee Passport. To get to TechNet it attempts to sign you in to Passport/Live sign-in. Accounts are apparently distributed across servers, and the one holding my account is down, so I can't get to anything that uses it, including the Microsoft.com homepage!

If you want to decrease the uptime on your web site, take a run-time dependency on an unreliable and unnecessary service.

Published 22 July 2008 09:45 PM by jesper
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Comments

# Paul said on 23 July, 2008 01:51 AM

I had the same error yesterday when I clicked a link in the System Center Essentials console that was supposed to take me to a page to download management packs.

# Grant said on 23 July, 2008 12:04 PM

Yeah, I'm getting the error too. That automatic passport signing/redirect dance has always annoyed me. Just show me the page!

# admin said on 23 July, 2008 02:40 PM

I couldn't get to www.microsoft.com/security this weekend!  That explains it!

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