Leader and Clerk Website Down Again

I don't want to complain too much but the Leader and Clerk portion of the website is becoming critical to our operations and it seems to have a less than necessary uptime and stability. We either need to figure out how to keep it up on the critical days or move back to paper. I called the Global Service Center and the whole department is out and not responding to calls. I too would like to be in church instead of keeping my website up but unfortunately I still have to work on it if it goes down on a Sunday. I find it down frequently on Sundays when I need it the most.

Am I alone in this?

I appreciate all of the good functionality we have but if it is going to be down on the most important day maybe we can make some changes.

"They" are quite well aware of the problem as many are clerks in their own ward.

The regular Church website doesn't seem to be working properly today either. When I first tried to log in at 11:30 PDT, I got the error message, "An error was encountered while handling the remote login." When I tried again at 11:39, it let me in, but told me that I had to complete my profile by adding my membership record number, which I though was strange, but when I went to Profile, it was already there.

More servers and a bigger pipe required. I'm guess SLC can afford it.

Bro ZoBell

You'd think the website would be faster today since it's fast sunday

It would be handy if there were some way of getting status updates when there are outages. Bishops counselor and I spent about 30 mins staring the spinney thing and made an appointment to come back later. Now it just says basically "Service unavailable. Try again later".

Bob Dixon
Lowly finance clerk

grantzobell wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2024 1:49 pm More servers and a bigger pipe required.

There are plenty of servers. I personally do not believe the real problem is something that money can solve.

tysenb wrote: Sun Sep 01, 2024 2:31 pm You'd think the website would be faster today since it's fast sunday

Thanks. Much appreciated.

lajackson wrote:
> [quote=grantzobell post_id=253110 time=1725220153 user_id=70847]
> More servers and a bigger pipe required.
> [/quote]
>
> There are plenty of servers. I personally do not believe the real problem
> is something that money can solve.
What do you think the real problem is then. Because as a DevOps Engineer, having more resources spun up as loads increase is a solution. That's the problem I see. When everyone in the wasatch front is on at the same time. Everything slows to a crawl, and becomes unavailable. I see it as the church needs twice the number of resources on Sunday between 10am-4pm Mountain time. But you said "the real problem". What do you see as the real problem?

Having seen this recurring issue be discussed consistently over the years, my outsider's impression is:

1) We are unlikely to know what the actual issue is, as the Church has not, and is quite unlikely to provide details. So all we see are the "end results".

2) Through the years, there have been a few Forum members who have indicated they have communicated with "insiders", who affirm that the issue is not server capacity (but will not specify details)

3) We are left to either disbelieve that explanation (a valid option), or to believe that there are other determining factors at play (another valid option)

There have been many seasoned professionals these past few years on the Forum, who are quite certain server capacity is the main culprit. Without the Church providing details, that seems reasonable given all the indicators we can all see. I personally feel it's equally reasonable to believe that if this were the case, then the Church by now would have invested in that solution and resolved at least the main factor causing Sunday-morning LCR outages.

Forum discussion can be helpful, but nobody here is a decision-maker, and if there are any insiders lurking around, they're not sharing details.

kadeprice wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 9:48 am What do you see as the real problem?

BrianEdwards has given what is probably the best answer any of us will see here at the forum. I do not know of any organization that will announce to the public the challenges they are facing, especially when it comes to issues of security.

I would add only one brief comment with the understanding that I have no inside information and that what I say is my own personal opinion. There will always be those doing all that they can to try and destroy the work of the Church. It will be a never-ending challenge until the Savior comes again.

Please keep in mind this past Sunday was unusual. Something else must have happened.

As for the usual slow down, I'd guess it's something in the process that becomes a bottleneck. Perhaps a database server that is already maxed out as far as what the vendor will support. But moving to a new database system means re-coding all the applications that talk to it. Not an easy task when the system has to remain up throughout the whole development and testing cycle.

russellhltn wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 8:15 pm Please keep in mind this past Sunday was unusual.

About half of the financial clerks in my stake would beg to differ.

lajackson wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 8:37 pm

russellhltn wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2024 8:15 pm Please keep in mind this past Sunday was unusual.

About half of the financial clerks in my stake would beg to differ.

The number of complaints in the forum jumped well over the usual number of gripes. I know Church Network Manager was also down for a number of hours.