Today’s Shadow news is brought to you by Luc (featuring his beard lockdown edition), community lead, Malte, the one and only german CM and Ryan the magnificent, US CM ( yes that Ryan guy !). Today’s focus will be on COVID-19 (and the lockdown) and its impact on Shadow. It will then be followed by the usual Q&A.
I) COVID-19 and its impact on Shadow
1) Impacts on Shadow
As Shadow announced last week they had to take some drastic actions in order to stabilize Shadow for current users and make sure they were providing a good service.
They created a blog post explaining what has happened and they are updating it on a daily basis. So if you have any questions about the current impacts of COVID-19 on Shadow, please check the article (here) before contacting Shadow because it has all the information you need and it is very detailed. They really are making a big effort to put all the information there, so that should be your main source of information about the situation.
And to give a grander view on the impact of COVID-19 on Shadow, here are some graphs they made to give everyone more perspective about the situation (moreover, most cloud-based companies runs into similar issues)
International comparison of the numbers of people connecting
There are huge peaks in every country, especially in Europe, because the confinement period began quite early compared to the US.
You can identify when it started (around March 12) because of the significant increase of connections around that time.
In the US, the peak is much lower because the confinement hadn’t been enacted yet at the time.
US specific graphs
You can see a huge rise in connections to Shadow, especially around the time when the western and eastern states started their stay at home confinement periods.
The root of the issue: Shadow having a massive and unprecedented amount of people connecting at the same time, thus driving the electrical capacity of their data centers to its maximum and showing the impacts of COVID-19 and the confinement on its usage.
2) Taking steps to improve the situation
- Setting the hibernation system to 30 minutes, after which you will be disconnected if you don’t use your Shadow
- All Boost activations are on hold in Europe until the service is more stable and Shadow can bring more people in their data centers.
- Working toward an increase of Shadow electrical capacity in their DC.
II) Activations,Extra storage & Shadow ghost
1) Activations
a) Europe
- BOOST: as previously said, their activations are on hold. Shadow is prioritizing the stabilization of the overall experience before bringing in more people.
- ULTRA/INFINITE: everything is on schedule there, the remaining users (around 300) that are due to be activated in March will get their Shadow beginning of next week.
b) USA
- For those active users that are not on special offer and were signed up before March 12th, therefore don’t have the Shadow Boost pricing yet, you can go to your account page and migrate your offer to the Boost monthly or annual plan (as the account page feature has just rolled into production). That won’t impact your spot if you have reserved a place in the waiting list for Ultra and Infinite.
- For the users that were on special offers before March 12th, Shadow is still on track for having that automatically converted in April.
2) Additional Storage
a) Europe
Additional storage should have been made available by the end of the month.
However, due to COVID-19 and its impacts on Shadow they had to prioritize solving these two main issues:
- Stabilizing the product
- Making sure they mitigate as much as they can the collateral damage of COVID-19
Its availability is then postponed to mid-April. Shadow is working on two crucial sub-features regarding this:
- The activation of every additional storage that was preordered
- Allowing users to add and remove storage on their account page on the go
These are on the roadmap for mid-April and both need to be ready at the same time, which has shown to be more time consuming than expected.
Nota Bene
Users of Ultra and Infinite (outside of France) that currently are on a french IP. It will be fixed soon and they will be switched to an IP, based on where they live, by mid-April.
b) USA
Last March 12th Shadow announced that extra storage would be coming in April 2020. Shadow is still on track for that deadline. Though with the given state of the world and COVID-19 particularly, things are subject to change.
Ryan will be checking on this matter regularly and make sure to communicate an exact date as soon as they finish wrapping up the last few details.
3) Shadow ghost
They are still stuck in China. As soon as factories reopen, Shadow will be able to ship those. More details to come later on.
Shadow will be giving away 4000 masks to hospitals in Paris will, shipping them from our Chinese factory that make the Shadow ghost. While Shadow ghost can’t ship they are shipping the masks over to the hospitals in Paris in order to support people who are helping with COVID-19.
Q & A
Q: What exact date will the new boost account start to be activated in the US?
A: We are still activating in the US. We’ve just drastically slowed down activations and then, also, it varies based on the data center that you’re connecting to. Data centers like California, Texas or New york should get their activations in April. Delay in Chicago might be a little bit longer, around May.
Q: Will it be possible to buy extra storage in Amsterdam?
A: It will not be possible to buy new storage for the moment. We plan for that to happen around late summer this year because we have to buy new batches since there was a miscalculation happening for current users. But everyone who preordered the extra storage will get it
Q: When will the second batch of Ultra and Infinite comes to the UK, or Europe in général?
A: Right now we have no information to share about that. We’re still trying to figure out internally. When we have a concrete date and more information, you will be the first to know
Q: Is there anything new about the page bug?
A: We’re working on it and we are raising the question a couple times throughout our days, since it’s been going on for quite some time. Sadly there’s a lot of things happening for the web team at the moment. So we have to manage it quite strictly and work on it but it will take a little while longer. But, until then, you can always check our FAQ on discord to know more about it.
Q: When will any infinite or ultra be available in the US?
A: Those are still on track, as we announced in March, for summer 2020 in limited numbers
Q: When is the road map going to come out?
A: Right now, it is being worked on internally. Not just for this year, it will also regard Shadow’s future in general. And it will be updated regularly. However, going back to the root of the problem for our delays, which is COVID-19, we’ve had to prioritize other things before. So the road map itself hasn’t been impacted but the communication about it to you guys has been. It will be unveiled once the dust settles a bit.
Q: What about Shadow coming to Canada?
R: Canada is indeed a country of interest when it comes to Shadow expansion worldwide but, so far, no specific date for it.
Q: Any further details on the U.S. VR exploration program?
A:
We thought we’d get some responses, but the development team was genuinely surprised by just how strong of a response we’ve received.
We greatly appreciate that everyone was so excited about building VR with shadow.
Now that we have closed applications, we’ve filtered through the list to move to the next round of evaluations
People are submitting a lot of different testimonials to be among the chosen ones as well as some pretty cool pictures of their setups.
Q: What about Shadow HIVE?
A: It was in development throughout 2018/2019, but is currently on hold.
Q: When will the issue with authorization codes be solved?
A: So far, our team is working on it to solve it as fast as possible. Just a tip if you find yourself in this situation: try not to click a lot over a very short period of time, it might overload the system and make things harder for everyone. If you don’t receive an email with the authorization code, wait a bit, then try again after a little while.
Q: When I get shadow infinite, will I be able to add two terabytes of extra storage or just one?
A: You will be able to add two.
Q: Is it possible to upgrade from Shadow boost to Shadow Infinite?
A: The answer is yes. However, that is currently not possible. It will be in the future, once Infinite and Ultra become widely available to all, and we have enough to go around. Then you’ll be able to upgrade and downgrade your system every month very easily.
Q: Is it possible to move from one data center to another?
A: It is not currently possible.
Q: Any updates on the iOS and TV OS client?
A: In regards to the iOS’s, iPad OS’s and Apple TV’s situation: right now, we are in discussions with Apple to try to find a solution to get it back into the store. We’re making it a very high priority of ours because we know we have a lot of users who use this application. However, we don’t have enough information to provide you guys with a full update on everything. So, we’re still waiting for a little more clarity before we give you guys the full scoop on the status of the situation.