`On 29 June 2017, from 05:00 to 07:43 CDT, Cloud Load Balancers encountered a licensing issue with a 3rd party vendor. Engineers worked with the vendor to resolve the licensing issue. During the time of impact, customers would have been unable to access their Cloud Services, Cloud products via their control panel, as well as unable to access ticketing.`
Unfortunately, I've seen this before, more than once. I've come to believe that a high-availability product should keep the places where human error can creep in to an absolute minimum. That means no artificial breaking points.
Ask vendors whether their products are susceptible to this failure mode and factor the answer into your purchasing decisions. Also recognize that if they want to they can give you a perpetual license file even if business terms mandate renewal.
It is seriously frustrating though. This is the busiest weekend of the year for my business. 2+ hours of downtime is not good.
Flag vendor? Fireworks manufacturer?