Hello Everyone,
In case you don't know what's going on, let me tell you.
Yesterday (Jan 2), we had an overwhelming amount of traffic since almost all of you resumed work after the holidays at the same time. This caused major strain on the servers which caused them to be either very slow or non-responsive. We had anticipated this and had already ordered new upgraded servers at another server facility, but we were dependent on that facility to give us the proper information to start using their servers. Unfortunately, we did not get the information in time and subsequently weren't able to make the transition before you all came back for the new year. This caused the problems yesterday, but by the end of the day, everything seemed to be working smoothly again.
Then at 7:00am Pacific Time this morning, the ISP (internet service provider) that our current server facility uses went down. Their ISP is AT&T and as a result, every other server in our area (almost all of them in Palm Springs) is also down. Our server facility (DISC) is working frantically with AT&T to get this fixed and this morning told us it would be resolved in an hour. This has obviously not been the case as it is still not fixed, and they are unable to give us an estimate.
So unfortunately for us, these 2 unrelated incidents happened 2 days in a row when almost all of you are dependent on our site. I can't tell you how sorry we are about this. I personally use the site at my church as well, and I know how dependent we are on Planning Center, so I know what many of you are going through. Please know we are doing EVERYTHING in our power to resolve this as quickly as possible.
So here is the current status. We finally received the information to switch over to the new servers this morning. Jeff has been frantically working all day getting the application installed and setup. Our problem is that the database is stored on the servers at our old server facility which is the one that is down. So instead of waiting an undefined amount of time, Jeff is driving to the facility at this very moment to physically retrieve the servers so that he can bring them back and immediately transfer the database to our new servers. The facility is an hour away, which unfortunately means that you won't be able to get to your information for at LEAST another 2 hours, but in all likelihood, it will take quite a bit longer to transfer all the information over.
We are committed to finishing this as soon as possible, but can not give an accurate estimate on when you will regain access to the site other than tomorrow morning. In addition, since we are being forced to rush the server transfer process, there will probably be slight issues during the day tomorrow as well until we are able to fully test it.
We want to thank you for your continued patience and for helping make Planning Center what it is today. We appreciate you and are so blessed to be able to help you organize and facilitate your ministry.
Aaron Stewart Product Manager Planning Center Online