- 11pm Update - Turning final, full flaps, gear down
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Starting to take a wee bit o' flack for the flying analogy, but hey - as with the work today, we started it, we gotta finish it. :)
Final reports from the teams are coming in on validation. I know we are cutting it close, but please trust me when I say we are working as hard as we can.
Will post just as soon as we turn things back on.
- 10pm Update - Flaps at 20 degrees, turning base
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I think I can even see the runway.
While it was my fondest hope that we would come in well under the wire, we still have a bit to tidy up, and are likely to go close to midnight pst. The remaining list of issues is pretty small, however its important to us that we get some deep testing in with things at 100%. For what its worth, on the list of issues, the highest priority item is the fact that our work order to get facilities to leave the A/C on after 8pm apparently didn't go through. Having the full crew here at the pace folks are working is generating some serious heat.
More in an hour.
- 9pm update - Flaps at 10 degrees
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Still working through a pile of little nit issues. The number is dwindling.
Given that we are still working on issues, its reasonable to expect that we are gonna use most of the runway. We are close to opening our connections to external partners, so you will soon see partner sites, gamercards, etc. start to light up. That will be a sign that we are nearing completion.
I know everyone is anxious - we are too :) Working as hard as we can....
- 8pm Update - On the Glide Path
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Validation is going well – a couple of bumps here and there, but we are quickly working the kinks out. Will try to send hourly updates from here on out. Until then, a couple quick facts:
1. Regardless of what time MSDN or your computer thinks it is, its really 8pm here in Redmond. (ok - 8:14pm)
2. Myself and e are not responding to posts right now – we just got this blog up, and obviously need to figure out a way to validate identities once things calm down. Until then, if you see a response to a post that looks to be from us, it ain’t.
3. Pardon my sense of humor. Not playing Halo quite yet – a little busy still. If I was, it would be e kicking my butt. Figured folks would be onto that.
4. While we admire our stateless big brothers like search, big web properties etc., our little machine is still a bit more finicky. We are making progress every day, so please pardon this brief interruption in our journey to always-up.
Stay tuned.
- 7pm Pacific Update
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Our work in the datacenter continues – we are currently in the validation process. I know everyone is anxious, but I am certain you can also understand why we want to make sure we got it right.
A lot of questions around what we are doing and why – of course, we don’t get to talk about everything, but here are some of the activities at a high level:
1. Completion of remaining upgrades to Windows and SQL Servers
2. Application upgrades/changes to support upcoming goodness
3. Capacity expansion changes
Given the number of servers we have to touch and some of the forward-looking work we are doing, this was a fairly complex session. Rest-assured we did some pre-work to make sure the downtime was as brief as possible. I know its hard to be off for a day, and believe me when I say we understand this as well as anyone – after this work we move immediately into executing on some plans for the fall that should make the length of future ‘maintenance’ sessions much more brief.
I have to go beat up on e and Shreddy in Halo for a bit just to make sure all is well. We have the entire LIVE org hitting things hard right now, testing every scenario, to make sure we got everything right. Will let everyone know just as soon as we are good to go.
- Trying to use your Xbox 360 as a Windows 7 Media Center Extender right now?
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If you are, then you already know that it isn’t working. You’re getting an error that states “This game requires a connection to Xbox LIVE”.
This requirement is unique to our pre-release operating systems such as the Windows 7 Beta. Released OSes like Windows Vista – or Windows 7 when it ships later this year – do not have this requirement. If you were surprised by this, we’re sorry.
Again, to be perfectly clear: the final version of Windows 7 will not require a connection to Xbox LIVE to use the extender functionality.
- Greetings and Maintenance Update
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Hey! I’m Derek and I work with e and Shreddy here at Xbox LIVE.
Our maintenance is going well – the team has been working hard through the night, and we have had minimal issues thus far.
A lot of questions around why 24 hours? That is a great question, and one I get asked in a lot of forums, even at review time J In truth, that is an important area for us in terms of improvement, and the maintenance we are doing today takes us a number of steps down the path to being able to do this more efficiently in the future. Xbox LIVE is a complex, robust machine, and the business has grown so quickly over its young existence – the prioritization of what to work on in terms of stuff that makes the service more fun vs. stuff that keeps it running is always difficult at best. We have a super exciting year ahead with a whole bunch of cool stuff coming that will make us users even more happy, while feeding our friendly machine at the same time.
Will keep you all updated as the day progresses…. We are working real hard to come in under the wire on this one.
- Welcome to the Xbox Live Operations blog!
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Hello and welcome!
This blog is the public home of the Xbox Live Operations team. We'll be using it to keep you posted on events like Tuesday's maintenance and alert you to cool things when we can. You'll find us talking about the public bits of what we do, what we're playing, and when we're hiring. We've had a lot of communication channels with you (our customer) over the years, especially the Xbox.com forums - but we thought it made sense for us to provide a single place for you to get the latest from us.
With that out of the way I think it's introduction time. I'm e, and I've been around Xbox Live since 2001. If you're a long-time Xbox Live customer we may have met playing Halo, on the forums, over email, or through my co-hosting a podcast with Major Nelson. These days you can also find me on Twitter.
You'll also be hearing from dereki91 and Shreddy73 as soon as they have the opportunity to poke their heads in here.
Before I go I'd like to mention a couple of housekeeping notes:
- Let's keep the comments PG-13.
- We won't be able to respond to every comment, but we'll read them and we do take your feedback seriously.
See you on Live!
