back to article Barclays computer says d'oh!

Barclays customers were left without access to their accounts on Saturday thanks to a computer failure. Customers could not use ATMs or online banking thanks to a computer failure apparently caused by a power outage. The bank insisted the problem was fixed within 20 minutes - by about 1.50pm on Saturday. But some forum posters …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    NCR

    Gawd, I remember meetings, back during the dot com bubble when NCR were going to maintain kiosks for certain people.

    I don't think they have any more of a clue now than they did then.

    Fortunately, I did all my banking in the morning, so didn't suffer a problem.

    N.

  2. Tom 13

    ATM, cash machines

    in my cadre we call them wall banks and I humbly offer it as the preferred term by El Reg. As it perfectly describes their function and friendliness.

    1. Piggy and Tazzy

      It could equally apply

      to the drones that work inside too.

  3. Velv
    Troll

    But they should.....

    Cue lots of idiots clamouring about "Disaster Recovery" and "they should have resiliance" when they know nothing about the situation.

    Some errors just happen, and the knock on effect if bigger than the fault. e.g. ever been in a phantom traffic jam.

    1. djack

      exactly

      Even with the best will in the world, you cannot plan for every eventuality. Some are impossible to predict. As long as they learn something from this and prevent it (or similar things) happening again, then it's not a complete waste.

      1. TeaLeaf
        Thumb Up

        Re: Exactly

        Reminds me of the time during a disaster recovery test when the guy running the test told me the PTB wanted me to document every possible problem we could encounter, and the resolution.

        Well, that would be job security for the next 10 years or so...

        1. Goat Jam
          Thumb Up

          Oh, I would love that breif

          Scenario 1:

          Stampeding Elephants crush datacentre.

          Resolution: Surround datacentre with crack guard mouse platoon.

          Scenario 2:

          Meteor Strike

          Resolution: Retain services of Bruce Willis

          et etc

          As you say, could keep you in easy employment for a decade!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      Aah, but

      ATMs and the associated back-end represent a tier 1 service (ie failure can lead to 'financial and reputational harm), so ought to be in the region of 4 or 5 nines availability. Sometimes, yes, sh*t does happen, but Barclays is not what it ought to be when it comes to resilience and failover.

      AC, obviously.

  4. Ball boy Silver badge

    Uptime?

    Believe the Reuters story and you have an outage (partial outage, I'll wager) of, what, 8 hours? So that gives an annual uptime of 99.92%. That's not shocking and, yes, I'm assuming no more problems in the next year. Take it at the bank's 20 minute value and their uptime goes to 99.994%. Mind you, both these figures are more than acceptable - phone lines and terminal kit at retainlers are both far more likely to let me down, I suggest.

    This gets a write-up because it happend on a Saturday - Sod and his laws, eh? If it had happend at 3am, the public would have been none the wiser!

  5. Paul Landon
    Thumb Down

    Not 20 minutes

    "The bank insisted the problem was fixed within 20 minutes - by about 1.50pm on Saturday"

    Funny that it was happening to many people at 11:40 or before.

    Uptime of 99.92% is acceptable in a single piece of equipment, but that is not good enough for the whole Dawkinsdamn system

    Haven't banks heard of redundancy? IGMC

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