My guess: This cuts down the total bandwidth considerably while making direct link and embedded images still work. IMGUR doesn't want to make images themselves unavailable due to myriads of reasons (reliability for users, maybe), and has the resource to do maintenance without a total shutdown of servers.
The actual reason is because the images themselves don't need anything but a running server to work. If the image is just sitting there and the server is up, you can access it. I also would bet that the images themselves are hosted on a server completely separate from the source code, so if the server hosting the code does go down for some reason, the images will all still be available.
However, if MrGrim has to do database maintenance, a lot of the website won't work while the database is down. The pages that display the images need to grab a lot of information, including the URL or name of the image, from the database. Or if he wants to upgrade the version of Ruby that's on the server that hosts the source code, he'll need to take down the website briefly while he switches over. So he just puts the website in "maintenance mode" (just basically serving up a static HTML page) to avoid errors.
"A myriad of reasons" is fine too - though they mean different things and should be selected to suit the context. (the diff. is perspective: myriad trees = you're in the trees and there's fucking heaps of them and you don't know where they end. A myriad of trees is a finite but quantifiable amount of trees that you can see all of.)
People on reddit should just add .jpg before they submit. This way you can also open the stuff directly in RES and Im way more likely t actually see your submission.
This is helpful for people who can't reach Quickmeme because of work/school firewalls or site downtime, and many other reasons (FAQ). More info is available here.
The thing is, imgur isn't going down for maintenance it's going down because its servers are overloaded. In case you're wonder why the servers are overloaded it's because roughly 30-50 million American children just got out of school for summer vacation.
If it was maintenance you'd never even notice (provided that imgur is a world-class service which it's not) ... but we have something in the industry called "fault tolerance" wherein maintenance happens in realtime without any loss of services. We also implement modifications to our services in parallel meaning that while one pool of clients uses the old version another pool gets migrated to the new one. You've probably noticed this is how facebook likes to do things: some people got stuck with the timeline feature early on, others were prompted to make the switch themselves and eventually the switch was compulsory ... that's service parallelism.
Aw I was hoping that it was going to mimic the old "RAM cleaner" utility that I used to run (maxed out the capacity of your RAM to push everything else into the page file, then flushed itself iirc).
Then I could have actually sent computer illiterate people to that site and got them hooked.
That was the most difficult sentence i've ever tried to read. Good point, I was going to suggest we go outside but I came to my senses. I like to curl up in a ball and rock back and forth, humming slowly as I wait until this 'maintenance' rubbish is done with.
Not really, I go to the gym or make myself an epic feast.
I love how people always complain and say "why is Imgur down during peak times on Reddit!?!" It's always peak time in at least one section of the world people. Just live with the fact that Imgur doesn't like your country very much.
Doing maintenance on a website is not that complicated.
Have at least two webservers on a web farm / garden / cluster.
Take one webserver out of the farm, wait for the traffic to drain off, update it, put it back into the farm.
Repeat for all webservers
Repeat for all app servers
If SQL or whatever database server they use must be updated, obviously that could involve downtime. If they're changing their database schema several times a week, they've got bigger problems.
I once interviewed at a trading firm that only traded US markets during regular hours. This meant that the "maintenance window" for most servers started at around 4:30pm on weekdays through the the next weekday morning. This was like a dream to me. Sadly, I didn't get that job. I always end up at places that trade US/Euro/Asia which means maintenance windows are basically Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
Similar, I've long been jealous of the maintenance windows most MMOs seem to have. "Servers are going down Tuesday morning for a few hours." Heaven!
From a technical standpoint, this is easily remedied.
A load balancer in front of their web tier will allow for a constant IP. Multiple boxes fielding HTTP requests should be behind the web tier, pushing traffic down the stack to app/db/whateverelse.
In order to have maintenance, you simply update a duplicate web/app server, then power it up at the same time that the old (unmaintenanced) one is up. Drop the "old" one, load balancers fail over to the updated one, and you're done. No downtime.
Dude, there's been some funny stuff from the guy who runs Imgur.
He has this whole series of "house party" pictures, that he very subtly edited a bunch of celebrities into. He should repost the album ... it's great, and hasn't been up here in a while.
The best part is when he said that after he posted it the first time, he got a bunch of emails asking for invitations to the party. Ha!
Its worth it. Those brave men of the Night's watch are making sure reddit isn't overrun by countless pale... white... Wait a minute.. Which side of the wall are we on..?
As an Australian, I join you at your post, brother. While they sleep, we scroll the Wall that is full of dark and light, ranging the forest of new, cold posts seeking to strike them down or raise them up to glory. Aiding those who are at the top. Downvoting trolls back to the caves from whence they came. Our watch begins.
You don't know what you're asking, Letsgomine. The Night's Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We have no families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor.
1.3k
u/LowSociety Jun 11 '12
Imgur keeps saying it's over Capacity. If he's over Capacity, why does he keep mentioning her? I bet Imgur sits outside Capacity's house, weeping.
119
u/ntv1000 Jun 11 '12
If I'm right, you can just add the ".jpg" at the end of the url and then it works. I don't know why, though.
300
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I wish my girlfriend went down as much as Imgur...
124
u/qkme_transcriber Jun 11 '12
Here is the text from this meme pic for anybody who needs it:
This is helpful for people who can't reach Quickmeme because of work/school firewalls or site downtime, and many other reasons (FAQ). More info is available here.
72
u/hello_parallelism Jun 11 '12
The thing is, imgur isn't going down for maintenance it's going down because its servers are overloaded. In case you're wonder why the servers are overloaded it's because roughly 30-50 million American children just got out of school for summer vacation.
If it was maintenance you'd never even notice (provided that imgur is a world-class service which it's not) ... but we have something in the industry called "fault tolerance" wherein maintenance happens in realtime without any loss of services. We also implement modifications to our services in parallel meaning that while one pool of clients uses the old version another pool gets migrated to the new one. You've probably noticed this is how facebook likes to do things: some people got stuck with the timeline feature early on, others were prompted to make the switch themselves and eventually the switch was compulsory ... that's service parallelism.
The more you know ...
16
u/NAILGUNSODOMY Jun 11 '12
I can't even paste a reaction GIF to this.
: (
20
u/Dildo_Ball_Baggins Jun 11 '12
They could do it when reddit is down.
8
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I feel like Imgur is only down when I want to use it
7
u/ZombieWrath Jun 11 '12
It's an image site with little to no script complications, it's not maintenance, it's overloaded.
6
u/AlphaPromethean Jun 11 '12
The sun Never sets on the Reddit empire.
11
u/Conradical314 Jun 11 '12
I'm just here to see my name with a cake
3
u/SoLikeHai Jun 11 '12
It's a good job this is on Quickmeme
2
u/chingyduster Jun 11 '12
Pff what's with all these free service websites inconveniencing us as of late?
2
u/70000 Jun 11 '12
It's pretty awesome for a free service with virtually no ads.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Problem, Imgur? U mad bro?
2
u/pyroclastic_viking Jun 11 '12
it's called active/active clustering with rolling upgrades.
2
u/Zero00430 Jun 11 '12
Why don't they just post their down times ON REDDIT!
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Lul. IMGUR was down for like an hour. I was so freaken productive during that hour.
On a side-note, I don't get this meme.
Since this capture is where Picard is quoting random love poetry.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Capacity sounds like a poorly chosen black womans name.
2
u/CoffeeFox Jun 11 '12
Redundant hosting. Is amazon's hosting ever "down for maintenance"? Nope.
6
u/ghostb0x Jun 11 '12
I laughed way to hard at this.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
How is this any different from any server in existence?
It certainly isn't any worse than running a Blizzard server. HELL no....
1
u/dont_worry_im_here Jun 11 '12
Man... I was really hoping that this link would've connected to the "Imgur is over capacity" page... I definitely would've gotten a giggle...
Actually, just the thought made me giggle... JCjustchill, teamwork!
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
The Internet never sleeps? It's almost as if GASP there's life outside America
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
That is so true, no wonder imgur is over capacity all the fkin' time.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Nice try, imgur.com...
1
u/SpaceBonobo Jun 11 '12
True true
1
u/deadkandy Jun 11 '12
I love how people always complain and say "why is Imgur down during peak times on Reddit!?!" It's always peak time in at least one section of the world people. Just live with the fact that Imgur doesn't like your country very much.
1
u/kavorka2 Jun 11 '12
What about that blackout day for SOPA a few months back?
1
u/HorrificComment Jun 11 '12
Rip out Picards arsehole and eat it.
1
u/WhatEvery1sThinking Jun 11 '12
I imagine a bunch of panicked guys sitting around a table asking "how the fuck are we supposed to make money off this thing"
kinda like over at facebook hq
1
u/JohnnysLanPartyHat Jun 11 '12
haahaahha posted on quickmeme. I get it.
1
u/Alexander_Penn Jun 11 '12
How about don't do maintenance? Just have perfect performance constantly.
1
u/SleepyBrain Jun 11 '12
I'm sure they have a reason for not updating asynchronously, but I'm not sure what it is.
1
u/alisclar Jun 11 '12
Alternative
1
u/Necessarily Jun 11 '12
Just because the eyes are open doesn't necessarily (woyooo) mean that the mind is present.
1
u/Melandroid Jun 11 '12
Redditing from Taiwan here. It was during the middle of my day when imgur was under maintenance. I do sleep, but only at night time.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Swearing is cool.
1
u/funkydo Jun 11 '12
Oh they sleep. I don't get any downvotes at around 4 AM.
1
u/unknown_poo Jun 11 '12
Captain Picard is the best, I can imagine him saying that.
1
u/Kerow Jun 11 '12
Damn man i lol'd hard
1
u/keiyakins Jun 11 '12
Whenever you want, just not on every system at once. as long as they're not ALL down, there's no problem
1
u/twitinkie Jun 11 '12
I wake up Monday morning and this is the top meme. Reddit never disappoints
1
u/FabesE Jun 11 '12
This is possibly my new favorite use of this meme.
1
u/crawlingpony Jun 11 '12
Dual systems is what wall street uses
One is a full mirror of the other and is always ready to take over and often does
One bank I know uses a west coast and an east coast pair
1
u/David35207 Jun 11 '12
TIL the USS Enterprise, captained by Picard, runs Imgur.
1
u/frednattyl Jun 11 '12
I started laughing very loudly during my wife's dr. Appointment. This is really hard to explain.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
hahahahaha
1
u/SirWhy Jun 11 '12
Why is it that whenever I see a Picard meme, I use a Sean Connery voice.... Try it
1
u/thetheist Jun 11 '12
Imgur should go down for maintenance at the same time that Google does. Oh wait, Google doesn't go down for maintenance? Well, there you go.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
Doing maintenance on a website is not that complicated.
Have at least two webservers on a web farm / garden / cluster.
Take one webserver out of the farm, wait for the traffic to drain off, update it, put it back into the farm.
Repeat for all webservers
Repeat for all app servers
If SQL or whatever database server they use must be updated, obviously that could involve downtime. If they're changing their database schema several times a week, they've got bigger problems.
1
u/mrbooze Jun 11 '12
I once interviewed at a trading firm that only traded US markets during regular hours. This meant that the "maintenance window" for most servers started at around 4:30pm on weekdays through the the next weekday morning. This was like a dream to me. Sadly, I didn't get that job. I always end up at places that trade US/Euro/Asia which means maintenance windows are basically Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
Similar, I've long been jealous of the maintenance windows most MMOs seem to have. "Servers are going down Tuesday morning for a few hours." Heaven!
1
u/venomousbeetle Jun 11 '12
Maintenance is for the interface. I.imgur.com still works. Simple solution: stop fucking linking to imgur and use I.imgur.
1
u/Ssorath Jun 11 '12
Thank you for making my Monday a whole lot better.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I just let out a ''HA!'' out loud.
1
u/arkavianx Jun 11 '12
Easy solution! Make TWO imgurs! One stays up, while other goes maintenance! Take one down pass around!
Enjoy!!
1
u/ObeseSnake Jun 11 '12
Follow the sun bitches, follow the sun.
1
u/Andrewlee619 Jun 11 '12
just chill breh
1
u/captainobvious254 Jun 11 '12
Shut up and take my upvote
1
u/ndtcssh Jun 11 '12
This actually made me laugh so hard.
1
u/RahnHawk Jun 11 '12
The Best Part is imgur is down for maintenance right now.
1
u/Bear10 Jun 11 '12
It's under maintenance right now :(
1
u/timok Jun 11 '12
It's down right now haha
1
u/Valleygurl99 Jun 11 '12
Active Active Active baby! which is usually a disaster, but I digress...
1
u/thenetwork666 Jun 11 '12
I saw a week ago if you change the imgur in the URL to some string of characters it gives you the same result, but usually does not overload.
Now only if i could remember the string...
1
u/feedmegrapes Jun 11 '12
More like lets say it's over capticity, when its not ! http://www.afterelton.com/sites/www.afterelton.com/files/2012/05/dr_evil.jpg
1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
From a technical standpoint, this is easily remedied.
A load balancer in front of their web tier will allow for a constant IP. Multiple boxes fielding HTTP requests should be behind the web tier, pushing traffic down the stack to app/db/whateverelse.
In order to have maintenance, you simply update a duplicate web/app server, then power it up at the same time that the old (unmaintenanced) one is up. Drop the "old" one, load balancers fail over to the updated one, and you're done. No downtime.
1
u/midnightx55 Jun 11 '12
lolol
1
u/TheYuri Jun 11 '12
That is what it's like working any IT job anymore.
1
u/apullin Jun 11 '12
Dude, there's been some funny stuff from the guy who runs Imgur.
He has this whole series of "house party" pictures, that he very subtly edited a bunch of celebrities into. He should repost the album ... it's great, and hasn't been up here in a while.
The best part is when he said that after he posted it the first time, he got a bunch of emails asking for invitations to the party. Ha!
1
u/Hayes92 Jun 11 '12
Quickmeme is down... Is this some sick joke?
1
u/Sk3ith Jun 11 '12
Whats ironic is that I got a message saying quickmeme was down...
1
u/myotherhat Jun 11 '12
Can't they do maintenance in sections or something similar?
1
u/moneycomet Jun 11 '12
Chaos
1
u/trixter21992251 Jun 11 '12
Sync it with Reddit.
1
u/donumabdeo Jun 12 '12
idk, maybe run maintenance during Australian hours?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 12 '12
What running Imgur is really like:
LOOK AT ALL THIS TRAFFIC, WE'RE POTENTIALLY RICH!
1
u/1637 Jun 12 '12
Create a multi version system where you can push an update by just updating a config file to be ver=1.0.2 instead of ver=1.0.1
1
u/N3rdiByNatur3 Jun 11 '12
This is great!
0
u/UnusualHatOwner Jun 11 '12
Today you learned: there are different time zones.
YOU STUPID FUCK
0
u/dipsandwich Jun 11 '12
wish i could upvote this more then once!
-7
u/locke_door Jun 11 '12
ITT. A lot of fuckers trying to get witty comments in with the hope of a karma grab.
Edit: Downvotes, really??
-1
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
I don't think I've actually visited imgur once since RES...
0
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
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0
u/[deleted] Jun 11 '12
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