Is Realtimetrains down?

[Elecman]

I can't log into RTT is it down for everyone?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Up for me.

 

[Sacro]

Yes, it's down for me too.

 

[Wookiee]

Been down for me for at least an hour.

 

[djpontrack]

I got told there was a server problem affecting RTT and Railmiles.

 

[yorkie]

Other sites are available including http://www.opentraintimes.com/ (which also includes maps)

 

[Harbornite]

RTT went down around 1300ish and the site was recovered not long after. Looks like it has had issues throughout the day.

 

[greaterwest]

RTT went down around 1300ish and the site was recovered not long after. Looks like it has had issues throughout the day.

Site went down around then and I have been getting an internal server error ever since 1500 or so, once it was back up.

 

[TheLastMinute]

According to their Twitter feed they've suffered a hardware problem on their server. Sadly it seems recovery isn't going too well either at present.

Realtime Trains ‏@realtimetrains 1h1 hour ago
So, summary of problem: RAID controller failure x3, we’re trying to migrate things over to other machines but not going well. Exploring opts

 

[greaterwest]

It appears to be working now.

 

[Tom]

It's back up at the moment. Likely to be intermittent for a few days until I can go and physically sort the hardware on Monday (I nearly ended up driving to York overnight tonight.)

There's a massive rewrite of RTT looming on the horizon (that is nearly finished thankfully) should get rid of most of these issues as it makes it easier to have multiple copies of the database around.

And other sites are indeed available. Not quite the same reporting breadth though...!

 

[rwuk]

It's back up at the moment. Likely to be intermittent for a few days until I can go and physically sort the hardware on Monday (I nearly ended up driving to York overnight tonight.)

There's a massive rewrite of RTT looming on the horizon (that is nearly finished thankfully) should get rid of most of these issues as it makes it easier to have multiple copies of the database around.

And other sites are indeed available. Not quite the same reporting breadth though...!

Firstly, thanks for the time and effort you've put into RTT - you've helped to get me home earlier than I would've done otherwise on more than one occasion!

Have you looked at migrating RTT to cloud hosting, either VMs or a re-working so that RTT runs "natively" (e.g. SQL Azure / Table Storage / etc)? I appreciate that servers you have likely already paid for vs. monthly recurring costs for Cloud is likely a key consideration, but I'm curious as to your take on this given RTT does a lot more behind the scenes than a run-of-the-mill website.

 

[DarloRich]

Other sites are available including http://www.opentraintimes.com/ (which also includes maps)

yes but they aren't (at least in my opinion) as good , visually appealing, easy to understand or easy to navigate as RTT. The maps ARE good on OTT

It's back up at the moment. Likely to be intermittent for a few days until I can go and physically sort the hardware on Monday (I nearly ended up driving to York overnight tonight.)

There's a massive rewrite of RTT looming on the horizon (that is nearly finished thankfully) should get rid of most of these issues as it makes it easier to have multiple copies of the database around.

And other sites are indeed available. Not quite the same reporting breadth though...!

you should put a paypal button on the site to help cover the costs.

 

[embers25]

It's back up at the moment. Likely to be intermittent for a few days until I can go and physically sort the hardware on Monday (I nearly ended up driving to York overnight tonight.)

There's a massive rewrite of RTT looming on the horizon (that is nearly finished thankfully) should get rid of most of these issues as it makes it easier to have multiple copies of the database around.

And other sites are indeed available. Not quite the same reporting breadth though...!

I would be lost without RTT as it is far superior to all the other sites and has made travelling by rail so much easier, particularly during disruption it is great to be able to easily find out how all my alternative routes are running in a format that is usable easily on both mobile and pc. Everyone I know has switched from Nat Rail as they are skeptical at first but once I show them how much better it is they all convert.

 

[theironroad]

I use RTT a lot though open trains at times. I find the compactness RTT maps really good for service location. While I problems with RTT altogether yesterday, I've had trouble getting the services to load onto maps for days. The map layout loads, but with no trains.

Hope it's back soon and best job to tom and others who provide it.

 

[Harbornite]

It's back up at the moment. Likely to be intermittent for a few days until I can go and physically sort the hardware on Monday (I nearly ended up driving to York overnight tonight.)

There's a massive rewrite of RTT looming on the horizon (that is nearly finished thankfully) should get rid of most of these issues as it makes it easier to have multiple copies of the database around.

And other sites are indeed available. Not quite the same reporting breadth though...!

Thanks for sorting it out for now, keep up the good work!

 

[Tom]

Have you looked at migrating RTT to cloud hosting, either VMs or a re-working so that RTT runs "natively" (e.g. SQL Azure / Table Storage / etc)? I appreciate that servers you have likely already paid for vs. monthly recurring costs for Cloud is likely a key consideration, but I'm curious as to your take on this given RTT does a lot more behind the scenes than a run-of-the-mill website.

I have both owned servers and rented virtual machines that deal with various parts of the infrastructure. I find the entire 'cloud' thing a load of rubbish tbh as it's no more flexible than owning your own equipment half the time and most of these cloud systems provide lower uptime guarantees than normal VPS suppliers. In any case to run RTT on AWS or similar would cost upwards of about £1200 per month owing to the demands of the system. My costs at the moment are significantly less than half that. Plus owning my own hardware for the fiddly bits means I can really specify exactly what I need rather than try and fit into the 'one size fits all' virtual machine options - I can't imagine many people need super high CPU, barely any RAM, lots of disk space...

 

[najaB]

Plus owning my own hardware for the fiddly bits means I can really specify exactly what I need rather than try and fit into the 'one size fits all' virtual machine options - I can't imagine many people need super high CPU, barely any RAM, lots of disk space...

Some cloud providers give you that level of customisation. As an aside, how do you manage to run RTT on a low RAM machine? I've been mucking about with the data feeds and there's a fair amount of processing involved in turning the schedule data into anything useful. Are you stuffing everything directly into database as soon as it comes in with minimal processing?

 

[Tom]

Some cloud providers give you that level of customisation. As an aside, how do you manage to run RTT on a low RAM machine? I've been mucking about with the data feeds and there's a fair amount of processing involved in turning the schedule data into anything useful. Are you stuffing everything directly into database as soon as it comes in with minimal processing?

There are significant trade offs when you have that level of customisation - its built into the priority schedules of the hypervisors. More RAM gets you higher priority on CPUs - which is logical - but at the amount of RAM I use means it's impossible to actually max out the CPU requirement. RTT itself runs at the moment across 4 virtual machines on my own private cloud, excluding the databases its total memory footprint is 400MB - the processing is just very optimised . Including database usage and caching it's about 2GB.

 

[Nick82]

Other sites are available including http://www.opentraintimes.com/ (which also includes maps)

I had a look at the link you provided. Is there a site where it covers all routes as that site only seem to have a selected amount

 

[petersi]

http://railcam.uk/site/
Covers more of the network
But is is a pay site (non commercial)