(This entry was previously published as a PDF on Twitter since I couldn’t access my blog.)
I really liked my first experience with Azure. I’m also going to certify myself (I still am). But that’s before things stopped working and I got some not very good support. This blog entry is a was a PDF because I currently can’t can use my blog. This entry is all about why.
Today I were going to search my blog (http://blog.gauffin.org) about how to do a (almost) a generic type constraint for enums. But instead I got this screen:
The scary thing is that I’ve got no notification what so ever about my site being down. So I browsed to the manage web site part of Azure and was greeted by the following screen:
As you see the CPU time has been consumed. If you look at the graph you’ll see that I got a spike. Since I used a premade WordPress installation template (using the wizard in Azure) and installed it as a web site I got no control over how the CPU is used (my site is probably just a regular web site in their optimized IIS).
As I can’t see how WordPress would consume CPU in any other way than someone DOS:ing me I also started to look at the network usage for the last seven days:
As you see the CPU usage is low all the time except during the spike. The strange thing is that the network usage is still normal. So it can’t really be a DOS attack or similar. Hence I also pulled the graph for the last couple of hours to make sure:
Yep. No abnormal network usage.
The initial attempt to get help.
At this point there is not so much that I can do on my own. I therefore contacted my appointed support person:
Hello,
My blog spiked CPU usage so it’s now suspended.
I got three issues with that:
1. Why wasn’t I notified?
2. Why did it suddenly spike in CPU usage without any increase in network traffic? (Running wordpress)
3. I do not understand how I can increase the quota
My blogs uptime is important to me as it’s visitors steadily increases. so this down time is not welcome. Especially since it just suddenly went down.
And as a reply I got:
Jonas,
Thank you for taking the time to write to me today. As I currently see, you are currently on the 3 months free trial, here are you allowed usage: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/ while on that trial. If you need to up your usage you will need to move to paying subscription
Thank you for replying. But you did not help me in any way. I know that I’ve used a trial. That should not matter. I was going to pay for it when the trial ends. I did not think that I would get suspended before that though. You could have told me “Do X to activate a paid account and your site will be up in no time”.
I tried again to say that I got a non-running site which I want up ASAP:
I’ve created a payed subscription “Användarbaserad betalning”, but the blog runs on the trial. How do I switch?
Which resulted in the following response:
You will need to open a ticket using this link: https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/support/contact/. For security purpose I do not have access to your account to switch that
I got no problem with that. Let’s talk with the billing department instead.
Getting help with the billing
The problem is that the technical support is not available when you are on a trial plan. But since I got no problems with starting to pay before my trial ends I contacted billing instead. I just want to get my site up and running again.
I started by emailing the exact thing as I did to my technical contact. As a response I simply got:
Hello Jonas Gauffin,
Your question appears to require technical support instead of billing and subscription support as selected
Nothing about my site being down or any attempt to help me. If they had looked at my account they should have seen that I’ve tried to convert my trial subscription to a “Pay as go” subscription. Isn’t that the minimum they could have done?
So I tried to explain to them that It’s a billing issue:
It’s billing related since I need to get it on my paid plan to get it working ASAP.
The technical issue (WHY it happened) can be solved later.
They responded with:
Hello Jonas Gauffin,
Thank you for your email. You have mentioned ‘I need to get it on my paid plan to get it working ASAP’. Could you please explain us on this and the action item for subscription management/billing team so that we could assist you further. Currently you have a ‘3-Month Free Trial’, do you mean to say you want to upgrade the trial to pay as you go.
The strange thing is that the subscription is shown as a “Pay as go” in the accounting section:
(that’s Swedish for pay as go) But that’s alright, I’ll try to elaborate:
My account page says that I just got a pay to go plan.
But the hosted web is running on the trial. So how can I make it run on the payed plan?
They responded:
Hello Jonas Gauffin,
Thank you for your email. I checked your subscription 9b300662-fb0b-445a-bb89-e919908e51d2 and see that the trial period is ending on 02/28/2013. However I see that you have removed the monetary cap on this subscription, hence it is as good as a pay as you go subscription. Your subscription will automatically change to pay as you go from 02/29/2013, however if the name does not change on 29th Feb, then you could change the subscription friendly name by following the steps below:
1. Login in to https://account.windowsazure.com using your Live ID
2. Click on “Account” tab.
3. Then click on “Subscriptions” tab.
4. Click on “Edit subscription details”.
5. In the new window you can edit the name under “SUBSCRIPTION NAME”.
6. Change the subscription name and click on the tick sign to complete the process.
So what he basically is saying that I should either wait 6 hours until the next cap period starts and hope for no more CPU spikes or that I should wait one week for the new subscription period starts.
At this point I’m getting quite frustrated. I want to get my site up and running again. Hence I might have used a bit too hard tone:
I got a problem TODAY with my web site being down. Are you telling me that I should just wait one week to get it resolved?
Come on. Do you really think that that is a good answer/solution?
Is it so hard to understand that I want my website up and running again? I really do not care how or if it involves you working together with the technology department. JUST SOLVE IT.
After that I got no more replies.
Trying to migrate
After googling some I found that I can create a new site using a new paid subscription which uses the same DB and simply point my domain name to the new site.
So I created a new subscription:
And then tried to create a new site using that subscription:
The wizard was really easy (as last time). But once the site is being created:
It’s suddenly removed and I get a notification:
I tried several times and got the same error every time.
So I’ve given up doing that.
Trying to find out why I got a CPU spike
Instead I was trying to figure out why I got a CPU spike, so I started by trying to download the log file:
But that didn’t work either. I got a login prompt:
Hence another dead end (I did try to login with my account).
Instead I tried with my contact again:
Ok. you can still answer why the CPU usage spiked without increased network traffic.
It looks really strange when looking and the diagrams at the portal.
But no success with that either:
Jonas,
I am actually not positive as to why that happen, but you an enable logs, so then if it happens again you can see what it was
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/manage/services/web-sites/how-to-monitor-websites/
Yeah, right. I surely want my account to get suspended again or have to pay for unknown CPU usage.
Resignation
I give up. I simply have to wait a couple of hours so that the new quota period starts. It really sucks.
So if you see my blog up and running at http://blog.gauffin.org feel free to give me a comment and congratulate me. If not, FEEL MY PAIN!
Update (two days later)
After that I did two things:
First I posted a post in the Azure Website preview forum.
I got a great response there:
Hi, Jonas. I apologize for the trouble you’ve experienced. I looked over your document and I believe you are seeing a problem caused by a bug in WAWS. We identified it a couple of weeks ago and it’s planned to be fixed soon. (I don’t have an exact date to communicate at this point.) It’s a fairly rare thing to see, so once your quota resets, I would hope that you would not see it again.
I am concerned that you saw a failure to deploy a new site while you were running tests. If you are still seeing that problem, if you will email me at XXXXX, I can help you with that.
I appreciate your thorough documentation of this entire experience. I agree that this was not a good experience, and it’s not the experience we want our customers to have. I have downloaded the PDF you posted and I will share it with some folks here to illustrate some places where we can improve.
I also have a contact at Microsoft here in Sweden who was involved in doing a code review on a rather extensive framework which I’ve made to a client. I’ve never spoken to him since but took a long shot and contacted him. He look things up at his end and pointed me to two forum posts who discussed the same problem as I had with the CPU spikes. Lots of kudos for that.
Conclusion
If you end up having problems with Azure dont expect too much from the first line support. And you actually have to pay for technical support (even if the problem is not yours).
However, the forum which is available for all seems to be active and you get relevant answers. But then again, you can’t expect fast answers.
I wish that there had existed a proper channel to use when you are sure that the problem is not yours. They could just answer that the problem is not theirs if it’s really you that have screwed up. i.e. you only get help for things which are out of your control.
Other than that I do encourage you to try Azure out. It might have it’s child diseases, but it’s still a really smooth service to use.
