Arrow Upgrades 1/12/2020

[John Bobinyec]

When you call "Julie" now you get an preliminary message stating that the reservations/status/ticketing/website systems (the whole shooting match) will be down on Sunday morning from 3 a.m. until 8 a.m.

Keep your fingers crossed that it all comes back on time.

jb

 

[Acela150]

It's normally for the website and apps to go down on a Saturday into Sunday. Normally if one needs to make a reservation at that hour they need to call.

 

[bratkinson]

From the dawn of big-time computing, most computer systems, from online systems to mainframe systems, have usually 'reserved' Sunday mornings for system maintenance and updates.

One large mainframe installation I worked at had 6 AM to Noon scheduled for hardware maintenance and/or upgrades, and Noon to 6PM for software maintenance & upgrades. One large bank I worked at had an errant systems programmer replace the SORT software mid day and it instantly shut down a couple dozen check sorters in multiple states! That's why Sundays are the preferred system update times.

 

[John Bobinyec]

It's normally for the website and apps to go down on a Saturday into Sunday. Normally if one needs to make a reservation at that hour they need to call.

This is a little more extensive than the normal Sunday maintenance because

1. The downtime period is extended from 6 a.m. until 8 a.m., and
2. They put up a special announcement when you call "Julie".

jb

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Not surprising, they posted on FB about 45 mins ago that the system is still down.

 

[niemi24s]

Looks like it's back on line now and no fare increases were seen on one route checked <whew!>

 

[RebelRider]

There was a server migration project in the data center this morning. A lot of systems were down, not just Arrow, though I imagine Arrow was the largest and most complicated system being worked on.

 

[niemi24s]

A further fare check using AmSnag (thanks, Paul) shows that sleeper fares for the Silver Star have been elevated to the level of the Silver Meteor for travel dates beginning 1 May 2020. Don't know if this change was made this morning or earlier, but it reflects what was reported in some other thread about dining on the S. Star.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

A further fare check using AmSnag (thanks, Paul) shows that sleeper fares for the Silver Star have been elevated to the level of the Silver Meteor for travel dates beginning 1 May 2020. Don't know if this change was made this morning or earlier, but it reflects what was reported in some other thread about dining on the S. Star.

If this was just a server migration thing then I doubt prices or anything else was changed during the maintenance down time.

 

[pennyk]

A further fare check using AmSnag (thanks, Paul) shows that sleeper fares for the Silver Star have been elevated to the level of the Silver Meteor for travel dates beginning 1 May 2020. Don't know if this change was made this morning or earlier, but it reflects what was reported in some other thread about dining on the S. Star.

The change for Silver Star fares (for at least the dates for which I was looking) was made earlier than this morning.

 

[Ryan]

the system is still down

 

[Trogdor]

I have nothing to add.

 

[Anderson]

Wonderful to see that they're adding overpriced crappy service to the Star.

 

[jis]

Wonderful to see that they're adding overpriced crappy service to the Star.

That has little to do with Arrow upgrade though. It happened before the upgrade. [emoji6]

 

[neroden]

Hopefully the long term project to replace ARROW with systems written in anything higher level than assembly language continues. I know they got off the original hardware and are running it on giant IBM emulators as of several years ago.

 

[Barb Stout]

Gosh, even my husband liked this. He is normally like Mikey and doesn't like anything. He is a programmer, what can one say.