Yep Postini really was down

fullroast · #1 10-15-2009, 08:41 AM

I can't really tell if I was effected or not. I have a shared hosting account and can see that emails were filtered yesterday.

I am curious how you are using Postini. Is it through your ISP or something else? Postini has worked well for me but I am in the process of using a different service for web hosting and they do not have Postini available. I am a small time user, so I will not be getting a Postini account for my hosting account.

It looks to me like there is not an easy way to get a personal Postini account directly from Google for a single user. I would have to open another account somewhere just to get Postini filtered email. I am not sure I need it enough to warrant a separate service. Is that your understanding?

thiggins · #2 10-15-2009, 10:49 AM

Everything was back to normal on Wednesday. Sorry for not updating the post (I just did now).

I host my own mail and found SpamAssassin wanting as a spam filter. So I switched to using Postini for spam filtering. Costs $12 a year. I believe you need to host your own mail server because you need to change domain MX entries. See http://www.google.com/postini/

beq · #3 10-15-2009, 11:37 AM

Another article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10374344-265.html

I had previously asked:

1) Did this only affect stand-alone customers of Postini, or also Google Apps Premier Edition subscribers who use the bundled Postini service and happen to be assigned to Postini's "System 7" server?

2) Did this affect outbound mail as well for those who use the Postini (System 7) outbound gateway service?

I asked because I have a 50-user Google Apps Premier Edition account which seemed to have been affected starting that night as well. The account is using Postini's "System 7" to process all inbound mail as well as outbound mail. As Tim says though, all seems to be well again now...

fullroast · #4 10-15-2009, 12:03 PM

Thanks, Tim. When I first check the Google page, I thought the $12 had a minimum number of users expected, probably from misreading the comment about discounts for 250 users or more. I will definitely use it on my mail server.

thiggins · #5 10-15-2009, 12:23 PM

beq- Sorry, but I don't know the answers to either of your questions. I use just the basic $12/yr message filtering service.

beq · #6 10-15-2009, 01:02 PM

Thanks Tim.

I saw from your linked Computerworld article that other Google Apps Premier customers using Postini System 7 were indeed affected. Unfortunately I only received reports of the problem late into the outage, since the users of this Google Apps account are on a different time zone.

(Luckily our other Google Apps Premier accounts are assigned to different Postini servers which were not impacted...)

It's too bad that Google seemed to be framing the outage as one that only affected the U.S., and only to stand-alone customers of Postini (the Postini support portal that Google points to seems to be available only to direct customers of Postini and not Google Apps subscribers).

But at least everyone can check the Postini system status page (System 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 20, 200, or 201), which FYI is separate from the Google Apps status page.

fullroast · #7 11-04-2009, 10:37 AM

Sorry for the meta-question, but I am curious, in general terms, where are you located, Tim?