Autodesk 360 outage

[stefan]

Hi,

The current A360 outage is very frustrating, given I was wanting to rely heavily on it for design meeting I just had......

Perhaps I am missing something - Is there a way to export these models as a package and use offline, like the Archicad BIMx models? Alternatively an offline option, though reading others comments this won't help with retrieving data when the server is down or if you cannot even log in.

If we there are no offline options then it makes it hard to rely on A360 heavily, for fear of what just happened - being left empty handed and red faced....

Stefan

[brianrepp]

Hey @stefan - sorry to hear about your frustrations, these situations are definitely aggrivating.  When you say A360, are you referring specifically to the Web access to your data (A360), or are you speaking of the Fusion 360 client (installed on your machine)?  If it's the latter, then yes, offline mode should help provide you access to your most recently accessed files.  What you would lack in those situations is collaboration workflows, cloud solves/renders, etc.

We have a few efforts underway to improve the offline experience, mentioned here.

[Anonymous]

Well I have no offline files period.  And a search of the forums for where they might be located (no - not in ..users/username/etc. - the most recent file there is 8 months old) is simply frustrating.  Why not just post a simple file location tree instead of having me scan article after article for stuff that should transparent.  This really sucks and you need to fix it.

[brianrepp]

@Anonymous - is this work you were doing during the outage?  If so, maybe give it a few minutes to see if it's just some delays in processing (due to the large backlog).  If that doesn't work, let me know.

[kris]

@brianrepp I'm a new user, and came online to use fusion during this outage. 

I couldn't access a file I created a couple days ago, on the same machine.

Now, this file was completely meaningless, but has me wanting to make something explicitly clear:

1) Whenever one of these outages occurs, I will lose access to my data.  Or at least some of it.

2) While working in offline mode (read from another thread), I cannot log out of Fusion, because I will lose all my data.

These are both true, yes?

This is of paramount importance to me, because if I don't have unfettered access to my data, regardless of what inconveniences are happening at Autodesk, then there is no way I will ever use the software again... I don't live in an area with ubiquitous high quality internet, nor do I have a guaranteed uninterrupted power supply.  The likelihood of losing both at an inconvenient time is non-trivial, and simply unacceptable for ANY software on which one might want to do any "real" work.

Kris.

[brianrepp]

Hey @kris - completely understand, it's a huge decision to make.  Regarding your experience today of not being able to access a file you recently worked on, if you have time, would you mind sending me an email with your diagnostic log files and a short description of what you experienced and the file you were trying to work on?  My email is brian dot repp at autodesk dot com.  The reason I'm asking is because if this file was in your local cache (which it should have been), you should have been able to access and perform general modeling (without collaboration, cloud render/solve, etc).  Today we ran across multiple users who were in a situation like yours, and are collecting data to better understand the different situations where something went wrong - it needs to be fixed.

To your first point, we have a number of projects underway to help make sure you have access to, at the very least, your most important and recent files.  I would normally share with you a blog post discussing these plans, but the provider of the blog platform is running into lingering issues from the widespread AWS outage earlier today - I know, a bit embarrassing.  When the blog comes back online take a look and let me know if some of those activities provide any comfort.

For the second point, about logging out, I actually need to check with the team on this as I'm not 100% certain.  Either way, it's something I will capture as a requirement.  Out of curiosity, why would you want to log out while offline?

Appreciate you taking the time to consider Fusion, and also share your concerns,

~Brian

[kris]

@brianrepp It's not really a huge decision.  It's a basic decision if my fears are true.  

I've been in business for almost two decades: what is generally true is that clients always want their stuff yesterday, and you can generally guarantee that technology will fail in one way or another when the chips are down.  I have redundant computers, and redundant on/offsite storage; so if one machine fails, I can always fire up another one. At worst, I'll have lost a few minutes of work.  However, if my internet is down, or your servers are not serving... I am completely down.  That a few days worth of recent work might be available (I'll see about sending the logs tomorrow) doesn't help if the client in question is asking about data a few weeks old.  As stated, I just started using Fusion, so I don't have any historical data to worry about.

AWS being down highlights something even more important here; that Autodesk has created a platform that is dependent on other providers.  Multiple failure points.  So even if AD did everything right, it can still go to pot.  Feel free to share the post when available.  I would fully expect these sorts of services to become targets for any number of actors with bad intentions, so these failures could easily become more commonplace.

To the second point, I am talking specifically to the fact that my being logged on is dependent on my being able to keep the machine on.  Let's take an example, which I don't think is impossible:

1) I'm working on a client project, with a hard deadline. 
2) At some point during the work AWS, AD servers, or my internet goes down, I stop saving.  But I keep working in offline mode, because I have a deadline.
3) A few hours into the internet outage, the power goes out.  If it's off for more than 5 seconds, history tells me it will be off for hours.  I have 20 minutes of battery backup.
4) 10 minute into the power outage, I will to turn off my machine off as a precaution.  Therefore, all the work done since the outage began is lost.  (Assuming this is the case.)

Or:

1) There's an extended outage.
2) BSOD several hours afterwards.  

Probably a few other ways that could go... and who knows?  The down time could be days.  And my clients (local), don't care at all about the state of my internet access.

Kris.

[dstevenslv]

The AWS issue Brian referenced was specific to the blog post mentioned earlier.  It looks like whomever is responsible for that blog didn't have a disaster recovery plan or has not yet implemented whatever recovery they have/had.

What failed at AWS was a single type of service at a single AWS data center though the scale is large.  Those of us hosted at other AWS data centers even using that service were not impacted in the way others with more complex services were.  Unfortunately the issue at that particular dc caused some significant issues for others though was resolved around 2pm Pacific time.  AWS is rock solid, probably the best uptime in the business.  An AWS outage should not be confused with an F360 outage (though in this case the earlier issue was AWS related) which have been know to happen much more frequently.  The issues with F360 availability most of the time seem to be app delivery and not raw infrastructure.

As for availability of services during an outage for F360 users is an issue that I don't think was properly fleshed out during the initial design.  It wasn't until an outage that lasted more than 24 hours when I saw any sort of urgency about addressing the issues of a remote only based file structure.  It's good to see them addressing it with urgency but it is something that should have been considered much earlier in the build out of the platform.  It could be the very thing that stunts the platform and limits adoption of the tool.  That would be a shame as it's got so many other things going for it.

[schneik-adsk]

@kris I think there is some confusion so let me try and answer some questions.

Once Fusion is off line, either due to an outage or your own choice, you can modify any document that has been cached. Cached documents are any document you worked on in the last weeks. You can set the cache length in the preferences. I use 60 days.

As you work offline, you CAN save. So your bullet 4 is not the case. Fusion will keep the latest version of any data you modify offline and you can work on it as long as fusion is offline up to 14 days.  After 14 Days fusion will ask you to log in.

If you computer crashes, your data is fine. No saved data will be lost. Restart, open fusion, and keep working.

If your power goes out, and your battery dies, your saved cached data is safe. Once power is back, juice up a bit, restart, open fusion and keep working.

When fusion is offline, you cannot log off. The Sign Out menu is removed from your user name menu in the upper right. You would have to explicitly go dig in the settings, find the cached/encrypted credentials and delete them by hand to create an issue when trying to start fusion offline.

To be absolutely clear, your second point, "I am talking specifically to the fact that my being logged on is dependent on my being able to keep the machine on." is not true. There is no tie to being logged on and keeping your computer on. I hope this alleviates at least some of your concerns.

[kris]

@shneik Thanks for the clarification. 60 days is much more reasonable, and that the machine can be turned off alleviates that concern.  It's something that wasn't previously clear in what I'd read, as the distinction between "sign off" and "device on" was not made..

I'm still torn, because you never know when a client will come wanting something historical.  If the cloud is down, I won't be able to deliver.  Can you provide some data as to how often Fusion has had an outage in the last year (and how long)?

Thanks,

Kris.

[stefan]

Hi Brian,

Just to clarify - I was referring to A360, we don't use Fusion - we are an Architects office and use A360 for presenting 3D models which are easy to navigate since Revit itself isn't particularly user friendly in that respect. It seems in either case Fusion was having similar issues?

My concern was we were relying entirely on that 3D model for an important presentation, accessing it remotely on A360. What I was wondering is whether it can be sent or stored as a self executable file as Archicad BIMx allows. From what I am reading in these posts the server shutdowns are not uncommon which means we can't fully commit to this technology - which in my opinion makes it a bit gimmicky - it exists but it may or may not work.

It seems like there is some contingency missing in the process.

Stefan

[brianrepp]

Hey Stefan - thanks for the clarification.  In the case of A360, it is indeed fully cloud based, so accessing online models when services are offline wouldn't be possible, so would need to resort to opening the model using Revit on a machine that had a local copy. 

[k6ls]

update: nevermind.. restarted F360 and all is well.. whew!!

.....

down again?   I get a message "Failed to download file from A360."  when trying to get a file from the cloud to work on.

here we go again.  can't do anything at school without the file.  I figured what were the odds that I couldn't get my stuff 2 days in a row? 

also, the file show in my folder is not the most recent, iirc.  shows 9:nn AM, and I thought I did something after noon.

[daniel_lyall]

@k6ls That happens a lot give fusion a couple of mins and try again I have that quite often giving fusion a couple of mins and trying again it always loads.