Redfin suffered about the worst occurrence a datacenter can endure, fire. They still beat Realtor.com by 12 hours with only 5 hours of downtime compared to Realtor.com’s 17 hours of downtime or 53 hours of downtime if you include the 36 hours of in-action before going offline for 17 hours after their blog was hacked. In fact, the once daily posts on the Realtor.com blog have ceased altogether for over two weeks, so it is apparent that the problem is not under control, unless giving hard working / blogging Realtors less exposure is part of an unannounced strategy.
That’s right, their datacenter caught fire and they still smoked Realtor.com, pun intended. There is only one right way to handle such a situation: quickly, honestly and transparently. If Redfin gets this, why can’t Realtor.com?
Chris Neitzert Sorts Through Charred Rubble of Redfin Datacenter
There was a fire in the Seattle-based data center that Redfin uses to host our web servers, causing a loss of service between approximately 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific Time. The entire data center was shut down by the fire department, including universal power supplies. Thanks to Redfin’s Chris Neitzert and his team, the site is now up and running. Throughout the interruption, our agents have of course stayed at their posts working with clients. But as the data center installs new equipment, it is possible that we will experience much-briefer interruptions in our website service around midnight tonight. We will continue to be available by telephone at 877-973-3346 or through the direct number our clients have for their agents.
For now, we apologize for the interruption in our service.
Aftermath of Realtor.com Blog Hack
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June 23rd, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Ouch. That sucks. Guess the RE community has to learn how to secure their blogs. And not just that- stop announcing every time they get hacked. EARTH TO REnet: hackers look for sites that advertise their vulnerabilities. Most people have no idea that blogs can be more vulnerable to hacks than regular websites because you can be dealing with opensource code which allows hackers to see the vulnerabilities, third party plugins that may be badly written and and comment WYSIWYG editors that can open other security holes. This community needs to learn to lock down their systems from the server level right through the to the blog software. It’s embarrassing to see this kind of stuff. Real developers understand security.
June 27th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I hear you but the vulnerabilities are the same announced or not… and a site like Realtor.com is not a mom and pop blog….this is a preeminent internet property….. there should be a team taking care of these issues…. we’re on week three now with no blog postings……you are right, it is embarrassing…. heads should have rolled weeks ago over the inaction and lack of communication… there is no captain overseeing the ship….it is lost at sea.